* Posts by jelabarre59

2005 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Aug 2013

US told to appoint a damn Privacy Shield ombudsperson already or EU will take action

jelabarre59

Re: Oooh just you wait

You Europeans are so polite. In the US, we jump to the sternly worded memo right away.

Maybe even a bad Yelp review.

jelabarre59

Re: Oooh just you wait

Looking forward to Facebook being banned in Europe! I wouldn't hold my breath though.

There, FTFY.

Is Google purposefully breaking Microsoft, Apple browsers on its websites? Some insiders are confident it is

jelabarre59

Re: Brittle software?

Google doesn't own the open source part of Android, but they distribute the open source + closed source flavor of Android that pretty much every Android OEM selling into the US/UK/EU uses. So basically they do "own Android".

So I guess the remedy here would be to require bootloader access on ALL Android devices (so we can load different firmware on them), NO apps on the system that cannot be unloaded/uninstalled, etc.

jelabarre59

Re: Brittle software?

However Google made YouTube use Shadow DOM v0 instead of v1, with the consequential performance impact on all non-Chrome browsers.

Google can just churn out standards and one way or another other browser makers will be left behind.

About the only reason I'm using a Chrome-based browser (Brave) for YouTube is because I can readily set it up to block ALL ads on YouTube, while I use Waterfox for everyone else (no ad-blocker, although I *do* filter 3rd-party cookies) since I think it's perfectly fair for everyone BUT Google to get paid for their work. Eventually I'll have time to set up an ad-blocker and let it default to "whitelist" mode except for those sites that specifically piss me off (other than YT that is, which has already breached that threshold).

I just wonder if you could simply make a pre-processor extension for Gecko-based browsers, to extract the relevant data and links, and render an alternate, local version of the page.

Bonne année, Google, Facebook! France to tax tech giants from 1 Jan

jelabarre59

taxing

Wouldn't being in France be taxing enough in itself?

(and yes, it's a French name)

Vitamin Water gets massive publicity for new flavor: Utter BS

jelabarre59

old film

I seem to remember a similar plot being proposed in 1971's "Cold Turkey" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066927/

Ticketmaster tells customer it's not at fault for site's Magecart malware pwnage

jelabarre59

Re: Their Site

THIS from a Co that takes the face value of any ticket as a starting point then doubles / trebles down on that, has had PLENTY of experience in keeping at least ONE of their faces straight .....................

And there's the problem of a company that holds an effective monopoly on pretty much any and all event ticket sales these days (except for, *maybe* stage performances from your local ballet school).

There's a reason we refer to them as "Ticketbastard".

Time for a cracker joke: What's got one ball and buttons in the wrong place?

jelabarre59

Re: Rodentia

Back in the ball mouse days there was online info on how to clean the ball by removing, spitting on (the evil ones suggested put it in your mouth) and wiping it clean.

Even better was the fake (presumably) IBM memo about field-replacement mouse balls (too hard to explain, you'd have to read it here: https://justjohnboy.com/2013/11/14/the-original-ibm-mouse-balls-email/)

Small American town rejects Comcast – while ISP reps take issue with your El Reg vultures

jelabarre59

Re: Good for Charlemont!

Why is the response to a failed free market solution to try it again? Especially when the big Cable companies have got their own little meat-puppet regulating for them

The problem is there never *was* a free-market when it comes to the cable companies. Other than a handful of small locations, cable providers had been given monopoly power to provide service to a community. The appropriate solution, way back in the late 70's/early 80's would have been to grant cable provisioning to at minimum *two* companies for any given area. *THEN* you would have seen competition building up.

Of course, by now those smaller providers would likely have been sucked up into just Speculum and Crapcast by now, but even then there would be *some* level of choice. (I remember in 1982 when we had McLean Cable for our provider, Mr. McLean himself had been the salesperson visiting households and signing people up. Then the cable service ended up being sucked up by progressively bigger and bigger companies).

Windows 10 can carry on slurping even when you're sure you yelled STOP!

jelabarre59

Throw in monitoring via Smartphones and you've basically tagged every single citizen in the western world with their own personal spy bug already.

unless you're carrying it in something like the belt-pouch I use for mine. If it can manage to muffle the ring enough that I don't hear it while driving (OK, I also have my stereo playing), then it wouldn't take much to muffle the microphone to unusability.

Home users due for a battering with Microsoft 365 subscription stick

jelabarre59

Re: Never guessed...

Does that mean that I could avoid getting those updates if I refuse to pay? Now that's something I could get behind!

Is this the Piranha Brothers "other other plan"?

For fax sake: NHS to be banned from buying archaic copy-flingers

jelabarre59

Re: Ban a system that works and is malware free*...

Last time I sent a fax? Probably about 1998. It seemed to be around forever, but in retrospect was a rather short lived star.

Actually, last sent a fax 3 or so weeks ago (with a multifunction ink printer, of course). The office for one of my daughter's therapists doesn't have email for the doctors yet. Various medical practices in the US are still like that.

Going back 30+ years ago, when I worked in film distribution, we'd *loved* for the various film depots to have had fax machines, just so we wouldn't have to read out shipping orders over the phone (that or a telex machine, which we also had). And the first fax machine we had there was one of those electrostatic ones, that would take 4 or 5 minutes to transmit/print a fax. These days it would probably be an emailed PDF of a barcoded shipping label. Then again, perhaps not, Films Inc wasn't quite that swift.

It's official. Microsoft pushes Google over the Edge, shifts browser to Chromium engine

jelabarre59

rOS

But will it run under ReactOS?

jelabarre59

Re: OK, then...

I'm no Microsoft fan, but Insecure Exposer, really?

I always preferred "Internyet Exploder" myself.

Tech support discovers users who buy the 'sh*ttest PCs known to Man' struggle with basics

jelabarre59

Re: It's 2018

I have plenty undergrads in a 'digital media' stream who can't handle differentiating between a media codec and a media container.

The same is true of many consumer electronics manufacturers. I've had multiples of those portable DVD players that claim to play AVI and/or MKV files. And if I can manage to track down the manufacturer (not a simple task in itself) I ask them which codecs they support. Usually get a dumfounded response.

jelabarre59

"until we found where the manufacturer had hidden the power switch on the case."

Style over function. The sign of a company run by marketing.

Funny, I don't remember Apple using that particular switch configuration...

HCL picks up Notes, spanks total of $1.8bn at Honest John's IBM software sale

jelabarre59

Re: Why all the hate?

The back end is a fundamental problem because it's not really email software, it's a bad database/applciation that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike an email server. It just doesn't behave right, by design.

I've often suggested the only reason Lotus Notes has email functionality was it was originally meant as nothing more than a DEMO application. Some salesdroids way back when had complained there wasn't a flashy NotesApp they could use to show off it's functionality, so some developer slapped together an email app in a day or two just to shut them up. LN was meant to be a free-form database, but email became the proverbial tail wagging the dog (and excuse the pun there).

jelabarre59

Re: Why all the hate?

I moved the other way, after my Outlook-using company got acquired by a Notes-infested behemoth. I hate Notes with a passion. I used to hate Outhouse until Notes came along, now I just look at it nostalgically.

It seems to be the situation for both Lotus Notes *and* MS Outlook. The ONLY people who like one of the products are the ones who have had the misfortune of using the other.

Sacked NCC Group grad trainee emailed 300 coworkers about Kali Linux VM 'playing up'

jelabarre59

Re: 'Security' people using MSDOS is simply mad.

Weird way to do it. You'd have thought they'd put the VMs in the stable system and make the unstable office-tools virus-bait system a guest, but no.

What better way to learn about application/OS insecurity than to be forced to use an insecure OS?

jelabarre59

Re: I know it's unlikely

Now, every time he would receive a new email, he would be treated to the full minutes long track. Every. Single. Time.

Now you just have their browser automatically load up the caramelldansen 10 hour swedish loop video.

Gigabit? More like, you can gigabet the US will fall behind on super-fast broadband access

jelabarre59

Re: Gigabit Internet costs

The main cost in providing FTTH is in running the last few metres of fibre into the home (i.e. digging a trench, putting a plastic tube in it, blowing fibre down the tube, and terminating the fibre in the home).

When our house was being rebuilt some 10 years ago, I tried to get a fiber line installed from the pole to the house while the trench was still open (in the mistaken presumption that FIOS would make it here by now). Verizon had no clue how to go about it, and obviously had never even considered such an idea.

What a meth: Woman held for 3 months after cops mistake candy floss for hard drugs

jelabarre59

Re: How many constitutional rights were violated ?

You Americans often seem to forget the words "well regulated Militia",

It means that, in order to be able to assemble a "well regulated" military unit quickly and readily, the citizens should be armed and able to use those weapons effectively. Not that they are already *in* a militia/military unit, but that they should be capable of forming one when needed.

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

jelabarre59

Send the bill

So if the EU wants to lock you out of the system, perhaps you should make them bay you back for all your investment into the system. Then turn around and make a deal with the US, using that money just to spite the EU.

Why is my Windows 10 preview build ticking? Microsoft reminds users that previews have timebombs

jelabarre59

Re: Getting fruity?

So what shows normally when it doesn't need one? A lemon?

Doesn't need to. The OS already is one.

jelabarre59

Re: Isn't it just wonderful ?

Man am I glad I stayed on Win 7 LINUX.

There, FTFY.

jelabarre59

Re: But this is Windows...

They really should have aligned it (Windows self destruct) to the 12th Day of Christmas as put together a carol about it.

" ...Fiiiiiiiive Gooooooolden Bings..." ding, ding, ding, ding, BOOM!!!!!!!!

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

jelabarre59

Re: Meanwhile in western France...

The shopping 'mall' at our Leclerc was almost deserted,

I thought "Leclerc" was the master-of-disguise member of the French Resistance in "'Allo 'Allo"...

jelabarre59

Re: Black Friday ?

Quite how one day can last a week I am not sure...

" ...You ask how I know of Toledo, Ohio? Well I spent a week there one day..." - John Denver

Black Friday? Yes, tech vendors might be feeling a bit glum looking at numbers for the UK

jelabarre59

Re: It's because

Joke's on the retailers as far as I'm concerned- much like Amazon's overyped (and by all accounts mediocre) "Prime Day", I associate "Black Friday" sales with bullshit sales tactics like that and disregard them.

Nah, I just associate "Black Friday" with "all the idiots and morons will be crowding the stores, so *I'm* not going anywhere near".

jelabarre59

I just want to hibernate from October to Dec 26th and miss all this Christmas crap, humbug.

Why stop in the middle of Winter? Just go all the way to March 1.

jelabarre59

Re: Relief

I remember in the early 1980's when we usually didn't see family until early January, we'd do shopping for them the day *after* Christmas. Stores would be nearly empty (of people that is; back then B&M stores still believed in actually stocking product rather than stupid displays that just waste floor-space).

Thanksgiving brings together Apple's Siri and Google Assistant

jelabarre59

Re: A christmas wish...

No good if the phone is out of hearing range. Besides I just ask my watch where my phone is.

I usually just use the house phone top call it. Which fails if the phone is dead, in the car, or the wind is blowing the wrong way and destroying what little cell signal we have at the house.

jelabarre59

Re: All inclusive exclusion

One of the first things I do when setting up anything with these nuisances is to disable them. Not being enslaved to the Apple & Amazon ecosystems, I don't have to kneecap those anyway, and Google is just an unfortunate side effect of Android devices. And the MS ones I only have to encounter when rebuilding systems for others.

But it *would* be handy for these "assistants"(*1) to add an extra key-phrase to their systems. After all, when setting up a new system, the first voice command I'll give them is "go the fuck away Cortana/Google/Alexa/Siri". The systems should be set up to automatically disable the assistant(*1) with that phrase.

*1: when it comes to 'assistant', I'm reminded of a saying my father had: "There's two kinds of help; 'some help' and 'no help'."

Microsoft squeezes a 2019 server out of the Azure DevOps pipeline

jelabarre59

Don't squeeze too hard

Just hope they didn't pop a blood vessel squeezing it out...

Talk about a cache flow problem: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

jelabarre59

Re: Not with NoScript it isn't. @AC

I wonder how well the technique works when tab number increases. I'm guessing "not well at all". My 2 primary uses for tabbed browsing are comics binge-reading, and wide-scope documentation. In both cases I often have 10+ tabs loading at the same time, good luck with that, cache-lurkers

Yeah, I should probably do "secure" browsing while I'm visiting TVTropes. I'll have 15 or 20 tabs open by then (at minimum).

Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality

jelabarre59

Re: Windows Mail gets worse and worse

The next iteration will remove the capability to send and receive email altogether.

Ah, the Gnome methodology...

If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

jelabarre59

What does "in the 2019 timeframe" mean that they couldn't have said with "in 2019"?

That's because MS wants to define "2019-timeframe" as the 650 day period starting 01-Jan-2019.

jelabarre59

Re: Vista anyone? Anyone?

I think the purpose of Win10 is to make WinME and Vista look better.

And ReactOS.

jelabarre59

Re: Cannot reproduce the net share issue...

Hmm, I think MS have access to a slightly larger test fleet......

Yeah, it's called "end users"....

jelabarre59

Re: Pathetic

Spelling! It should be "seems".

Seams are what you get in trousers.

Well, MSWin is pants...

jelabarre59

Re: Q(&A)

I am old enough to remember that Quality used to be something positive.

Remember that "control" can mean keeping something from growing or expanding too much. Therefore "Quality Control" means insuring the quality of a product doesn't get too high. Product testers were conflicting with that agenda.

jelabarre59

Re: Wait For Another October?

Happily for MS there will be another October in the'2019 time frame', so all is not yet lost.

I remember when a science-fiction club I used to be in had some particular piece of business that *had* to be taken care of by a particular month. That month's meeting ran out of time to handle business just then, so they made a motion that the meeting would be put on hold, to be resumed on the 45th of October (or whatever month it was).

Empire state of mind: NYC scatters palm leaves for Bezos' cloudy web shop juggernaut

jelabarre59

Another hole

Well I guess *somebody* has to move into that hellhole. Any smart businesses that *can* get out of NYC (and NY State) have already done or are in the process of leaving. And every year, NY government passes more regulations to entice yet MORE companies and jobs to leave (as those particular companies' pain thresholds get reached). I don't and never will commute to NYC.

Heck, Amazon could have moved to the massive IBM Somers campus, now that IBM has completely moved out. But I guess NYC has bigger kickbacks and can be bribed easier.

OK Google, why was your web traffic hijacked and routed through China, Russia today?

jelabarre59

Better perf...

People's connections in the US to Google – including its cloud, YouTube, and other websites – were suddenly rerouted through Russia and into China in a textbook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijack.

I was wondering why Google's system performance seemed much better on Monday...

Microsoft lobs Windows 10, Server Oct 2018 update at world (minus file-nuking 'feature') after actually doing some testing

jelabarre59

Re: Maybe we're to blame

How many of us on his forum have a "test device" enrolled in the developer previews? I know I do and apart from periodically updating it and having a prod about I literally do nothing on this device. So as far as Microsoft are concerned the data they slup from it is all good?

I have one like that. Other than using it to buy music off of whyTunes (because Apple can't be arsed to make an Android client or make a way to buy directly off the website), or my daughter borrowing it while I'm fixing her laptop, it doesn't do a lot other than letting me see what crap is coming down the line.

I *HAVE* considered the possibility that MS should make an automatic test/validation suite we could run on our TechPreview machines when we're not doing our own "testing" on them. Sure, it's giving them another excuse to continue not doing their own testing, but that's what their going to do anyway.

jelabarre59

Re: Build number?

It's just a name plucked from the ether for something specific.

I was thinking more likely they plucked it from someplace other than "the ether". Someplace a little closer related to biological processes.

jelabarre59

Given Microsoft's track record of software quality since the release of Windows 10, I think that a sarcastic response is letting them off easy.

There, FTFY.

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

jelabarre59

kinda open

The ever so sad thing here is, despite being released by the same behemoth that overloads their desktop OS with a shedload of unwanted App Crap (tm), the MSWin phone still seemed less locked-down than Apple's fortified fortress garden, and Google's attempts to build an equally armored fortress on the opposing hill.

Maybe we should start porting ReactOS to abandoned WinPhones...

Sudden Windows 10 licence downgrades to forced Xcode upgrades: The week at Microsoft

jelabarre59

Nosy

Yeah, just what I want, yet *another* nosy snooping app on my system. I have no need for Siri, Alexa, Cortana, OKGoogle, or whatever else. Searching is what Keyboards were invented for (well, not exactly *invented* for it, but certainly what is the proper way to initiate search).

My hoard of obsolete hardware might be useful… one day

jelabarre59

Two bookcases full of boxed software (including OS/2 Warp 3 *and* 4 as well as an (unopened) copy of the Brief editor as well as loads of games)

Finally binned by set of AIX install CDs (v3.x-> 5.x, various revisions) last year. But still need to keep my install disks for Quicken98 and Family Tree Maker 7, because those are the versions we still use.

Had tried donating my SunBlade 100 (UltraSparcIII) to some opensource projects, no one wanted to take it (no keyboard, but it *used* to run just fine otherwise).