Posts by Chairo

Re: Linux to the rescue?

Hmm, a short search of the microsoft website shows that there is at least a mechanism for microsoft to update the microcode. They seem to deliver it via windows update.

Perhaps Intel can persuade them to deliver this specific update quickly and with a comprehensive description?

Re: It's dead, Jim

@Steve Davies 3

If 70 million sales (for this year) is sinking to Windows Phone levels then WinPhone was once a best seller.

WinPhone effectively owned the smartphone market with 47% market share in 2007.

A few tactical mistakes and a market can be lost very quickly. CP/M anyone?

Re: Yes, they look beautiful

Exactly what sort of 'disruptive design' are you wishing for, a flying wing?

Flying wings are not so practical for passenger jets. What I am wishing for is something that shortens the time I have to spend in a cramped space with bad air and smelly fellow passengers that share the same armrest. Cruise speed of the 707 was 977km/h. Cruise speed of the 787 is, well, erm, 903 km/h.

60 years of progress and we are moving slower than our grandfathers.

Edit: @AC, I agree with you. yes, there has been a lot of progress. Certainly in commercial point of view. affordable tickets are nothing to sneer at. On the other hand I feel optimisation was too one sided. No one is really pushing the limits. Certainly not the airline companies.

Re: Evolution until someone pulls the plug

We know what happens to species that can only eat one kind of leaf or bug or whatever.

That would depend on the availability and survivability of your food source. Ant eaters and Pangolins are doing quite well since a very long time.

That said, I think our civilization is far too dependent on fragile electronics that can be taken out by sun flares or other EMP sources. It's a bit like settling on an active volcano. Our life is just too short to take eruptions into account that happen only every few hundred years.

Of course there are so many other things that could threaten civilization as we know it, as well. Some large caldera eruption or an asteroid impact could take out our main food sources at any time. Then the question would be how well we could cope. I suppose not well at all.

Re: What if you don't buy into the whole social media thing?

If you want to purge your empty google+ profile you could do that on google's downgrade page. At least that worked for me a while ago.

Re: IoC

Have governments already weaponized exploit code to cripple vehicles?

I think they are currently busy to weaponize a certain fighter jet.

Re: This is a much smaller update than going from Windows 7 to Windows 10

Skeuomorphic design has, I'm afraid, served its purpose and its day is done.

IMHO Skeuomorphic design makes the user interface more comfortable for the eye. The new "modern" interfaces feel like a return to the bad old times of 8bit processors and low-res graphics with severely limited color space. Something most of us happily left behind in the past where it belongs to.

Of course for millennials it might look fresh and fancy, but for most others the new-old flat interfaces are just an eyesore.

Re: Brexitters

Nah, the rich ones are down in their tax exiles.

You mean they moved to Ireland?

Re: HP still sells printers?

No they don't. They are selling ink. The printers are only a necessary means of empting the ink cartridges as soon as possible.

For me HP printers are dead for several reasons. One of them is county coding the cartridges. In the last 15 years I changes my country of residence 4 times and shipped my complete household including IT equipment overseas. I bought an HP printer specifically because it was specified to work with both 100 and 240V. And then I realized that the only way to get refill ink is either to ship it in from overseas or to buy hacked refill cartridges at EBay.

Another problem are the drivers. Over the years HP drivers evolved from simple drivers to a complex and bloated mess of crapware.

Finally their hardware seems to be carefully crafted for planned obsolescence. It was interesting to see the various parts fail one after another. The most messy story was the failure of the print head deflation. That was done by a plastic cogwheel, pushing up a spring via a lever. The force of the lever caused the cogwheel to crack and thus no deflation happened. Instead of air flowing in, ink spilled out from the print head into the printer and ultimately over my furniture, hands, clothes, ... Oh, and only this cogwheel that had to withstand the lever's forces was made of plastic. The rest was good solid metal. Interesting choice of material.

Ironically without these shenanigans they would not only have sold far more ink to me over the printer lifetime, but I would still use the printer and continue to buy their ink. As it is, some other company sold me my next printer. Back to evil school for HP management. Perhaps they'll learn something.

So how many printers from 1999 offer "Windows 8" compatibility?

I'd say pretty much all Epson printers. That is one of their really strong points. Of course they never changed their drivers into unsupportable bloatware like some other well known printer producer.

Not giant hornets

Yes, there are quite a lot of different hornet species in Asia. Luckily the giant hornet is only one of them.

That said even the smaller ones can be quite aggressive if they feel their nest is threatened.

Last week a group of Marathon runners in Japan found that out the hard way. And those were smaller hornets. Their nest was only half a meter in diameter. Giant hornet nests can easily reach a meter.

From personal experience I can say giant hornets are really something special. Already the sound they make is nothing like other wasps. They sound similar to the sound a big beetle makes during flight. But they have nothing of the clumsiness of a beetle. Occasionally one zips through our garden. Good that they don't go for sweet stuff, like European wasps. As long as they don't defend their nest and you aren't a honey bee, you should be safe. Of course knowing that doesn't make you feel any better if one is hovering in front of you. Running away does not work, standing still does not make her go away and slowly walking off takes a lot of willpower.

@Dwarf

does anyone know if they still push adverts on El Reg - not seen one for very many months ;-)

Yes, they do. But my in my impression most of these ads are non-intrusive and don't disturb, so I prefer to not adblock El Reg.

Btw: IMHO the quality of advertisement on a site tells also something about the general quality of the site itself, so there is also some benefit of not blocking ads per default.

Re: You can put lipstick on a pig

a bloated pig with lipstick, to be precise.

applause, applause, applause...