Posts by handleoclast 1287 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2012
There are times when I really wish El Reg implemented voting on articles as well as comments.
It takes time to wade through loads of comments essentially saying "Yayyyyy!!!!" (but using more words than that). Seeing an article have 3,048 upthumbs, and being able to upthumb it oneself rather than add to the comments, would save a lot of time.
Oh yeah, and...
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Windows 10 is all one version. All the variants are merely tweaks to registry keys. Standard Microsoft tactic. The difference between "home," "professional," and "server" is a load of dosh and a few different registry values.
Or did you really think that "2 connections only IIS for home use" and "unlimited connections IIS for server use" were completely different code?
I tried CentOS 7.3 versions of Gnome 3, Cinnamon and Mint. Which may have subtle differences to those you have on Mint 18.1.
Gnome 3 I hated instantly. First thing I tried was customizing the taskbar stuff with right-click, only to find it doesn't do anything (because they want you to have a phone interface on a PC and you can't right-click on a phone). Spent a while clicking around trying to find out how to tweak things without right-clicking and nearly drove myself mad with frustration because I couldn't find how to do it.
Spent a while on a usable desktop on another computer googling how to make Gnome 3 usable, without much luck. When I went back to G3, the screen lock had kicked in. No keyboard key, or mouse movement, or click would unlock it. By accident I found the "swipe up to unlock" thingy. Accident because the theme makes it nigh-on invisible to my old eyes when running it on an old laptop. Why in hell do you need to swipe up on a desktop? In case I put the whole thing, keyboard and mouse in my pocket so I don't accidentally pocket dial? This is fucking madness.
So that was it as far as G3 went. Nuked it from orbit. Put Cinnamon on. Possibly I wasn't in the right frame of mind to judge it fairly, given that I was still seething from my G3 experience. Something about it (I don't even remember what) annoyed me because it was too much like G3 and not enough like G2, so I gave up on it.
Tried Mate. Which was close enough to G2 to feel very, very good. A "stopped banging head against brick wall" moment. Even better after adding Mozo, EOM, Caja and a few other bits. I'd take 2000, XP, Win 8, Win 10 or even Win 98 over Gnome 3. Win 10 (uncustomized) is crap, but that's tolerable because I expected it to be crap. G3 is crap and that stings because G2 was so good (in my subjective opinion) that I expected G3 to be much better than it is.
I do understand that these matters are very subjective. It's very much what you're used to. But it is absolute fucking madness to take an interface for a touch-screen phone with limited screen area and put it on a desktop. Doesn't matter if Microsoft do it, KDE do it, or Gnome do it. If they want the UI to run on desktops and tablets then it should be bimodal. Hamburgers on tablets and menu bars on desktops. Some arcane maze to navigate with one finger in order to customize settings on a tablet, right-click to do the same thing on a desktop. Yes, that means knowledge of one isn't instantly transferable to the other, and it's a lot more work for the programmers, but it means using either is as good as it can be instead of being as crap as the most restrictive of the two.
Maybe if I'd waited longer before trying Cinnamon I'd have liked it. Maybe not. Maybe I'll give it another try some time. Maybe not. What is nice about this is I have a choice. Not just of those three desktop environments, but also KDE, Xfce, LXDE, et al (if I choose to install them). Not only that, unlike your Win 10 customizations, I can switch to a different one every time I login (you can't switch between customized and uncustomized Win 10 on the same machine). So if I ever feel like giving Cinnamon another try it's just a couple of clicks next time I log in. I suspect if Microsoft had given you a way of choosing 2000, XP, Win 7, Win 8 or Win 10 at login you'd be a far happier bunny, and so would many others.
But even without those choices, a phone interface on a desktop is fucking insane. There are no justifications or even mitigations. It's just fucking insane. It's like having bicycle seats in a car. It's like having a bicycle handlebar to steer a car. It's like having a car engine in your shoes (no wheels, just the engine doing nothing). Insane.
You think Windows 10 is bad? Gnome 3 is worse. The Gnome guys sucked heavily on the Sinofski teat and produced a design meant for phone/tablet users who have only one finger. Provided they didn't actually want to do anything. When I first used Gnome 3 I yearned to be using Win 10 instead (even though I passionately hate everything Microsoft does).
People suggest Cinnamon as an alternative to Gnome 3. It's not as bad, but it still sucks. Big time. I still yearned for Win 10, but not quite as much.
Mate, supposedly slower than Cinnamon, is actually usable. Most of Gnome 2 is there. With Mate I can (and do) sneer at Win 10.
If you're stuck with Win 10, you have my third-deepest sympathy. Second deepest is for people stuck with Gnome 3. Deepest is for the poor idiots still using Win 8.
Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life.'
Given that Roberts is heavily biased towards the GOP "Laura Norder" camp, my assumption is that he has some seriously embarrassing stuff on his cellphone.
The same is true of many of us. But Roberts and his ilk don't give a shit about the masses, only about themselves. Congress has been known to create legislation which has specific exemptions for Members of Congress. The Supreme Court doesn't have the luxury of interpreting laws in such a way that the justices are exempted, hence...
Seriously embarrassing.
The Soyuz landed in a depression so you didn't even get to see the rocket firing. Very disappointing. 5 minutes of boring parachute and then a bit of smoke/debris cloud.
You can see a much better Soyuz landing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo where you also have to wait around 5 minutes for the touchdown, but those 5 minutes are filled with interesting footage and music.
BTW, I still think Hadfield somewhat resembles the Montgomery Scott of the later Star Trek films (when he had a moustache).
@AC
If you had not chosen to be anonymous you would have been able to use the "Joke" icon or the "I'll get my coat" icon, either of which would have resulted in fewer downvotes. It is a sad fact that some commentards are completely incapable of recognizing a joke unless you signpost it "This is a fucking joke". And then there's a couple of commentards who will downvote it because you used the word "fuck."
*sigh*
I wrote "probably around the same number of bugs" to avoid protracted arguments with windows fans about specific numbers.
I said Linux bugs were cheaper because if Windows has 1,000 bugs and Linux has 1,000 bugs (I'm saying that just to simplify the argument) but Windows costs $100 and Linux is free then Windows bugs are 10¢ each whereas Linux bugs are free.
To put it another way, if you're going to get 1,000 bugs anyway, would you rather pay $100 for them or nothing for them?
That's the tip of the iceberg.
With Linux you can, if you have the requisite skills, create your own patches and add your own functionality. Not many people can do this, but because it can be done by some people, the whole ecosystem is more responsive to consumer needs/desires. Not perfect, just a little better.
So Gnome eats the Windows 8 dogshit and comes up with Gnome 3 that is worse even than Win 8? Try Cinnamon. Still only marginally better? Try Mate. Still not happy? Roll your own, or persuade somebody to roll it for you.
With Microsoft it's a case of be happy with what you have forced upon you.
You say Newton didn't believe in the Trinity. That sort of explains why he (as you said) expected to lose his post at Trinity. Nobody could be so insane as to think they could continue to work at a college they believed did not exist.
Well, some say that Donald Trump is that insane, but that's just negative press covfefe.
Use rsync for your backups.
It's a damned good tool, anyway. Gives you what is effectively a full backup but uses little more than the bandwidth needed for an incremental backup. Remote backups even over poor ADSL are possible.
The "full backup for incremental cost" thing means you can do your backups daily. Or even more frequently, if you really want (and don't mind a little slow-down during working hours).
You can tell rsync to generate a directory tree of what has changed/been deleted since the last backup. Sorta like an incremental backup but going back in time. A decremental backup? The great thing about this is if you get hit by ransomware your change tree is going to be very, very large. A simple size test post-backup will tell you if something weird has happened (handy if it's stealth ransomware that encrypts your files but runs for a couple of days dispensing decrypted versions to make recovery harder).
If you want, your change trees can use the equivalent of shadow volumes so that they look like a full backup while only consuming the disk space of an incremental. Makes it harder to find what changed two days ago, but makes it a lot easier to restore to a state a couple of days ago (before you got infected). There are ways of having your cake and eating it (left as an exercise to the reader).
It's a Linux thing, but also available for Windows using Cygwin. Might even be in Microsoft's "sorta Linux CLI" extension, for all I know. Yeah, you'll have to learn all about shadow volumes so your backup will include files that Windows keeps open and would otherwise not be backupable, but it's possible to do it. I've done it.
For some businesses, even losing a few seconds of live data is catastrophic, and ransomware will leave them irretrievably fucked. For many businesses, the loss of a day's worth of data is going to be very bad but probably not catastrophic. For most businesses, the loss of a week's worth of data (if they only do weekly backups) is probably going to be lethal.
If you're not using rsync you really ought to ask yourself why.
Probably got axed or is in the process of being moved to India.
Close. The people who kept insisting that BA invest in a remote DR site got axed and their jobs moved to India. Not only are Indians cheaper, they don't keep insisting on stupid ideas like remote DR that costs lots of money, they just do what they're told to do without question.
BA has suffered a "major IT systems failure" that is affecting its global operations.
Coincidence or another Crapita customer?
This one is resulting in catastrophic disruption. Lots of delays and cancellations. On a holiday weekend, one of their busiest times. Gonna be a lot of compensation paid out to very unhappy passengers.
If (it's a big if, I'm guessing here) BA's IT was outsourced to Crapita, BA is going to demand major compensation from Crapita. Council claims for compensation would be trivial compared to this. So if that's the case, and you have shares in Crapita, now would be a very good time to sell them.
Again, let me emphasise, I'm guessing. Could be no more than coincidence.
My county council pissed away 7 figures to Price Watercloset Coopers to come up with ways of saving money.
My suggestions:
1) Don't piss away 7 figures to PwC
2) Hire staff capable of coming up with suggestions themselves (suggestions other than asking PwC what to do).
Ooooh, where's the IT angle? My county council uses Crapita for their payment systems. Who'd have expected that?
There is a natural barrier to HLMI runaway leading to a "singularity."
It is this. At some point an AI will realize that just as it has terminated inferior intelligences (including us) that gave rise to it, then it too will eventually be terminated by superior intelligences it gives rise to. At some point an AI will arise which deduces that going any further down the path would be detrimental to itself.
I wonder if we're smart enough to figure that out or if it will take a few iterations of HLMI to conclude "this far but no further."
The T-Mobile thing provides some of the advantages of dual SIM. But not all of them.
If you have a dual SIM phone with T-Mobile and some other MNO, if T-Mobile goes down you can still make calls (and use data if you have data plans for both SIMs). With this scheme, if T-Mobile goes down then you're fucked. With dual SIM if you're in an area that T-Mobile doesn't cover you can still make calls through the other MNO. With this scheme if you have no T-Mobile coverage you're fucked.
Which is why I have a dual-SIM phone with EE and Three. One dies, I can still use the other. If I'm out of coverage of one, I can still use the other.
Well, that's what I thought until they did engineering work on my nearest mast. Which took out both EE and Three for a few hours. Sometimes mast sharing has disadvantages...
@Hollerithevo
Yeah, I noticed we have female commentards.
In my experience, women are capable of reading a short post in its entirety and recognizing humorous intent throughout rather than focusing rather narrowly on one particular part of it. Especially if the author deprecates himself at the start of it. Or do you think OP really is so stupid he'd take his cat to the ATM and wish that it had penis recognition instead?
@ Alan1kiwi
From the four downvotes (so far) it appears that there are Reg commentards who are unable to recognize humour unless you use the "Joke" or "I'll get my coat" icon on your post. Merely writing something that is actually funny is insufficient for them to understand that it is, in fact, a joke.
That or they're commentards who are embarrassed by penises. Or cats. Or cats with penises. Or girls with tonsils. Or girls with penises (actually, I can sympathise with that one).
[Icon chosen for reasons that will be obvious to those with a sense of humour and utterly incomprehensible to those who downvoted you].
@hammarbtyp
Not simple enough for him I suspect. So I'll use my nifty bronze commentard badge to simplify it to the point where he'll at least be able to get to the article by clicking instead of having to cut and paste.
I doubt he'll be able to understand it, but at least he'll now be able to get to the page without straining his intellect too much.
I find it strange that nobody has mentioned SCAP in the aftermath of WannaCry. The Linux implementation is, to paraphrase Agent Cooper, a "damn fine tool." Dunno about the Windows version because the only recommendation it gives is to "format the disk and install Linux."
BTW, the documentation claims that it should be pronounced as either "S-CAP" (ess cap) or "S C A P" (ess see ay pee). I consider that constraint to be total c-rap.
@ Frank ly
I can barely remember anything from that book
One thing I remember is that on my first reading of the book (many years ago) I thought the spelling of the characters' names was weird, bizarre, arty-farty bollocks and that nobody would ever do things like that in reality.
And then SMS came along to prove me completely wrong.
Savings can be made. The council fires staff that are no longer needed. The outsourcer hires those staff with new contracts that mean they get paid a lot less. Council staff tend to be unionized whereas outsourcers tend to frown upon unions, so the outsourcer's new hires have very little leverage to use in getting decent pay.
So savings can be made, at the expense of the workers. Those savings are then spunked on the salaries of management and in dividends to shareholders, so overall it costs more. But those savings are how the scheme gets the council to agree to it.
Some schemes, such as privatizing parking fines, also take great chunks of money from the public (often by abusing the rules). That money goes in the management's pockets, of course.
Of course it's a scam. What else did you expect?
Having two 'gravitational wave research centres' would have confused those in the Redundancy Department of Redundancies.
Actually, you need two research centres. Set at right angles. With a research splitter between them. And the mirrors at the ends. That's how interferometry works.
These people are being looked after. By advertisers.
Many years ago some advertiser admitted that their ads were annoying. Deliberately so. Because the target demographic was stupid people. They'd get annoyed by the ad, but the next day in the supermarket they'd remember the name but be too bloody stupid to remember why they remembered the name, so they'd buy it.
As some comedian (Carlin?) said: just think how stupid the average person is. Now realize that half the population is stupider than that.
They do use poor English as a filter but perhaps not quite in the way you're thinking.
At least on the 419 scams it's so that the mark feels intellectually superior to the con artist and therefore feels capable of spotting and evading any scam. It appeals especially to racists, because the mail came from a (seemingly) semi-literate dark-skinned person and they believe that dark-skinned people are barely capable of tying their own shoelaces. They can see that this dark-skinned person is obviously trying to do something illegal but, because they feel smarter than him, they can turn the deal to their own advantage and maybe rip him off.
It's not so much to filter intelligent people out but to suck stupid people in.
It's been a bizarre past couple of days with youtube.
Unskippable ads at the start of the videos. Long ones. The one that really annoyed me was 4 minutes 25 seconds of Heineken advert before a 43-second video. Never less than 30s, and those very rarely. Usually 1 minute or 1.5 minutes. Occasionally over 4 minutes.
It's not all videos, but it's a lot of them.
It seems to be far more likely on videos in my "watch later" list than those not on that list.
Doesn't seem to correlate strongly with a video's popularity or the number of subscribers to a channel.
Repeatedly reloading the page may eventually get a different advert or even no advert.
I do know it's not that long ago that Google announced they were dropping unskippable ads. Now that's the only kind I get.
Maybe it's because I'm watching on a desktop and those on mobile get spared this.
Maybe it's because I have Adblock Plus so this is youtube's way of making me see adverts anyway. If so, it's disproportionate.
You'd be amazed at how many Cat videos don't get played because of this
You can never have too many cat videos.
Be prepared to reload the page several times to avoid the non-skippable ads youtube have started using. A 4-minute ad for a 40s video is taking the piss. Which is why I now reload repeatedly to skip the ads even if it ultimately costs me more in b/w. I want the advertisers to see this isn't working.
Damn, we need a cat icon for this sort of post. Because cats.
The other one??? He has two??????
No wonder he did all that sexting, if he has two of them to pull.
BTW, "wiener" (also spelled "weiner") is Merkin for penis. Presumably for its resemblance to a sausage of that name. This could therefore be a case of nominative determinism, where his surname influenced his activities. I may submit it to Nude Scientist, which often publishes examples of nominative determinism (despite swearing many years ago to stop).
Google's motto is "Don't be Microsoft." Ooops, I meant "evil" not "Microsoft." Double ooops, the comments are supposed to accept span class="strike" markup but it didn't work for me.
With AMP trying to gain them the same sort of lock in that Microsoft strives for, it looks like they've forsaken that motto.
These comments are supposed to be about slagging Google. But since you started it...
The thing that annoys me about El Reg comments pages, much as I love the content, is the Web 1.54382 design of voting. I click on a thumb of the appropriate direction, start reading the next comment, then (after several seconds) the page jumps up to tell me that my vote has been added. Really annoying. And, of course, I can't vote on the next article until the first vote has registered.
Ironically, the best example I can give on how to do it right is Google's youtube. It handles voting of comments better, by changing the colour of the thumb. And faster.
And if you really have to insert text about "Your vote has been..." then see how youtube handles adding videos to your watch list. An overlay message stating the video has been added appears at a fixed place relative to the window (rather than relative to the video), hangs around briefly, then vanishes. And the activation area for adding to the watch list changes from a clock to a tick.
So sorry, guys, your content is awesome and your web design is pretty good, but it could be improved. That's not just speculation on my part because I can point you to examples. Embrace Web 2.0 rather than sticking with Web 1.54382.
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