* Posts by FuzzyWuzzys

702 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Feb 2016

So when can you get in the first self-driving car? GM says 2019. Mobileye says 2021. Waymo says 2018 – yes, this year

FuzzyWuzzys

Don't be so sure. This potential market is not just big, it's f**king huge. This is basically the automotive industry version of what "the cloud" has done for IT infrastructure and everyone wants to be the new AWS.

Of course, there's no way I'm getting in one for a few years, especially the minute one goes wrong and locks on the accelerator at full pelt on the M5 and there's nothing to do but wait until it hits something or runs out of fuel. Or worse it drives full pelt down Regents St into Piccadilly Circus at 50mph.

Every major OS maker misread Intel's docs. Now their kernels can be hijacked or crashed

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: "From which it follows that the docs were unclear. "

"Os that developers copied each other - happened even before StackOverflow was available..."

I was thinking that too, is this simply a case where Fred was the first to read the manuals, he wrote about it and didn't get it quite right then others have simply thought, "Sod reading the manuals, this looks OK.", tested it and it works. Then that knowledge passes into lore and before you know it's simply the "done thing" without question.

Microsoft's most popular SQL Server product of all time runs on Linux

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: "We're looking at seven million downloads"

That's what occurred to me. How many are docker pulls and other container tech, that gets pulled and never even started.

You can pull SQL Server for Linux for free but you still need to agree the license and where required ensure you have a paid up membership to the MS clubhouse to use the Std and Ent versions.

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Re: Embrace, extend...

Seriously? SQL Server will be in trouble if it ever relies 100% on Linux, but trust me there is no way Linux can be stamped on by MS. I'll eat the brickwork in my house on the day MS kill Linux!

If MS try to stamp a particular distro and get even close to killing it, it will simply get forked and pop up elsewhere. Linux and FOSS in general, is like a balloon full of water, if you squeeze some part of it, it simply pops out somewhere else having been forked.

New Monty Python movie to turn old jokes into new royalties

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

My two favourites

"Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

"Bloody peasant!"

"Oooh! What a giveaway!"

And of course...

"Yes, you must spank us all. And after the spankings comes the oral sex!"

Sir Clive Sinclair dragged into ZX Spectrum reboot battle

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Well I backed it...

While I feel sorry you've been cheated, sincerely I do as it's a horrible feeling to be fleeced by a bunch of crooks, surely this is one of the risks that all 5000 early investors would have signed up for? Any early investor in a product always faces the very real risk that the product will not appear. You're always taking that gamble that if it works, you're quids in but if it fails then you're simply out of pocket.

You're sold an idea and your cash puts faith behind the idea and gives it credibility but nothing is guarenteed unless in the contract you signed with the startup, "You will get your initial investment back if we fail." and no one in their right mind will ever put that clause in the contract you sign with a startup.

Of course I'm assuming you did sign a proper legally binding contract with this obvious bunch of shysters?

Google Pay heads for the desktop... and, we fear, an inevitable flop

FuzzyWuzzys

Did my own research....

...albeit very lazy and limited.

I commute everyday into the wonderfull little hamlet of London-on-Sea and just watching the number of people struggling to get the phones to pay at the station barriers and shops around the stations shows the mobile pay market, in terms of physical presence, just isn't mature enough yet. The number of people using credit and debit cards on the same payment systems, it works better than phones but even that pales into insignificance compared to the number using Oyster and paper tickets that simply work 99% of the time.

Google will vet political ads to ward off Phantom Menace of fake news

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Same as the old boss...

As the old saying goes, "Money talks and bullshit walks.".

The more money you have, the better your online advertisements and doubly so in the political arena. Nothing new to see here then.

MacBook Pro petition begs Apple for total recall of krap keyboards

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Re: I think Apple will fix this

I have upvoted you purely based on your wonderfully pure optimism in the face of a multi-billion dollar company you think actually cares.

I'll tell you what will happen. Apple will release a new MBP version, with a fixed keyboard. All the true zealots will rush out to buy it, love it to bits, dump their old kit on the second-hand market and forgive Apple for everything. Those that remain with theie busted keyboard on the old model will quietly be fixed as there will so few that Apple will not have to perform a mass recall and get any bad press.

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Useless Apple

"MBP is still far and far above anything else."

It used to be. Born and bred in the 8bit era, moved up through Windows until the blessed light of Lord Jobs found me one Summer morn in 1998 and I bought my first Mac. At one point, with just 3 people in our house, we owned 4 iMacs and 3 Macbooks. Verily the Lord Jobs did smile upon our blessed house. All the while I continued to spread the good word as I toiled among the heathens in their Solaris, HPUX and Linux world. I tried hard to spread the good word of the Lord Jobs but then the Church of Apple succumbed to the vile will of dirty money, they saw that they valued vanity and money over quality offerings. The Cook has taken the word of the Lord Jobs, corrupted it, lead his flock astray by the introduction of sub-standard offerings. My faith strained to breaking point until one day it snapped. I installed VirtualBox on my iMac, I learned in secret that Windows and Linux were not evil, just alternatives and that they had value and much to offer. The heathen Gates and his lackey Balmer had worked hard on their own good word and it was good once more, blessed was the way of Powershell, pure and clean. Our very own Luther, Linus had worked hard and had established his own following, once again, good an strong. I also began once more to work in the infinite possibilities of custom hardware. The haze lifted from my eyes and I found there was a new true way, the "way of balance" whereby we can all co-exist in a tolerance and respect. I now build my own hardware and look for whatever works best when I need it. Sometimes OSX, sometimes Windows and other times Linux.

Now I preach the word of "horses for courses", sure you can pay a premium for expensive hardware to run what is a good verison of Berkley Unix with a superb GUI, and OSX is a damn fine O/S but don't let the light of Jobs blind you anymore my son. Be at peace with all the world and it's varying viewpoints.

There is still an elegance in the offerings from the Church of Jobs but having ascended to meet his own maker, the money-lenders entered the temple and now there is no one to cast them out. Apple doesn't care for us anymore, if they ever did, greed and corruption abound in the once pure Church of Jobs and I won't pray there anymore.

It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Oh yeah!!!!

So let's check this, every user will now think....

"Right so I can't use 'ABC123' as it won't let me use something that simple anymore, let me try 'ABC_123'. Cool, it works! Pub anyone?"

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Testing? Ha ha!

"The boss of British bank TSB has insisted it carried out rigorous testing ahead of a systems migration that saw thousands without access to their accounts for over a week..."

I think from bitter experience we all have, we know exactly how that went....

CIO to QA testing manager:

"Sorry we brought you into the migration project so late, we just ran out of time. If you can get some testing done, you have a couple of days left at the end before the drop-date for the migration."

QA and Testing manager to developer leads:

"F**king typical, I'm always last to know! You devs, when you get this thing up and running in UAT, get some users to give it the once over, eh?"

Devs:

"F**king typical, we're always the last to know! UAT testing users, when you get given this thing, can you log into the test system and check it works. Don't go nuts, we haven't got time."

Users get told 3pm Friday afternoon before the drop-date:

"Yeah we logged in, John ran a report and Fred said he could login OK. Yeah, we'll sign it off. Pub anyone for a quick jar before the weekend?"

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

FuzzyWuzzys

Sad really to see MS in such a state now

I'm probably stating the bleedin' obvious but MS are now in a corner of sorts. In the 1990s they bullied their way onto the home desktop around the world and created this "monster", they saw the desktop as their own "1000 year reich". MS is now stuck in the 90's, they have no choice but to try to keep Windows desktop relevant despite the everyone slowly going mobile and cloud services. For the average person, a browser, keyboard and pointy device is all they need, it makes no difference now what the hardware of O/S is. Here I'm talking purely about granny and grandad, and Uncle Kev who simply want email, maybe a spreadsheet or word-proc type app, access to Facebook for keeping touch with rest of their family, that type of user couldn't careless what they O/S or apps they use, they can do that all online these days and they outnumber we geeks thousands to one.

MS are going the way of IBM, they were top of their game at one point but sadly the world around them is moving far faster than they can possibly keep up with and while they'll remain relevent in the grand scheme of things, they will slowly have to be pensioned off. They're trying, they have Azure but it's not a patch on the rapidity and spread of services like AWS or Google clouds. MS, just like Oracle, are like that aged relative who refuses to leave their old home and go to a warden controlled housing block. Everyone knows they'll be well looked after, much happier and they'll make more friends, but they simply won't budge, clinging on to a past that's fading away fast.

Twitter: No big deal, but everyone needs to change their password

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

"sorry"

Ah, there's that word "sorry" again, issued after another cockup. "Sorry", it's the emotional Lira/Drachma of life, utterly worthless in real terms and losing value with each and every use.

Exclusive to all press: Atari launches world's best ever games console

FuzzyWuzzys
Stop

Nostalgia ain't what I thought it would be

I went through a huge tech nostalgia trip a few years back and I never believed people when they said you always see your childhood through rose-tinted specs. They were right. Sure when I played the old classic 2600, Dragon and Amstrad CPC games the memories came flooding back but it was shortlived. I quickly realised that technology moves on for a very good reason, it simply gets better and more enjoyable. I love playing Fallout4 these days and playing with tech like AWS services, Docker all the stuff that comes frmo the Apache Foundation, it's fun and it keeps evolving. I had a blast during my childhood sure, my parents encouraged me to get into tech and I have a good, well payed career from that but I'd rather look forward as I get older, the best is yet to come.

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

Privilege of having been on it while in "dry-dock"

When I was a kid my Dad used to work as manager of a council swimming pool, he became friends with one of the ground engineers. Summer 1979 this engineer, my family and another got invited to take a tour of Heathrow "backstage" and I got to go on Concorde while it was grounded having routine checks made. Our guide got me one of the little packs they only gave to passengers who flew on it, brochures, magazines, menu, sleep masks, postcards, badges! We got to see the whole plane but sadly not the cockpit as it was being repaired and a little too dangerous with wires all over the place. One of my best childhood memories.

Years later my wife got really into plane spotting and we used go down Heathrow all the time to sit all day watching planes come and go, noting numbers and such like. When you heard that roar you knew it was coming in or getting ready to rip down the runway and off across the Atlantic!

Legal tech startup tries to haul 123-Reg to court over 24-hour backup claims

FuzzyWuzzys
Headmaster

A wise man once said...

When I was a fresh-faced spotty trainee mainframe op a wise old git once said to me, "We never call it a backup until we've tested a restore of it!".

Facebook privacy audit by auditors finds everything is awesome!

FuzzyWuzzys

Indeed...

With apologies to Curtis and Elton....

"An IT auditor who knows anything about IT is like a dog that speaks, very rare. An IT auditor who knows anything about IT privacy and security is like a dog that speaks Norwegian, even rarer!"

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Re: Nuke it from orbit

No, nuke the comms links to the FB server farms, then they're simply be locked away from the rest of humanity. Remember Zuck and his mates think they're above the rest of us so they would never bother to check they can communicate with us, so they'd never know they've been cut off.

Maybe then we can advance a couple of percent down the evolutionary path without a constant stream of cat pictures, inane pictures of cousin John's latest drinking binge and what Aunty Doris did on holiday this year!

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Education is no longer designed to teach.

"She isn't being taught Biology.

She's being taught how to pass the Biology A level exam."

That's it, that's it right there. That's the God's honest truth in black and white! Well said sir/madam.

Kids are not taught for fun, enjoyment or to gain a career they love, they're taught simply to pass exams in the hope that they'll just find something they like and having a degree from Scumbag University on the outskirts of Manchester will prove they're not completely stupid. I can't understand anyone not wanting to immerse themselves in something the love.

My daughter loves English, loves reading. They're supposed to read for at least 30 mins a day in her class, she regularly gets through 1 or 2 books a week, even the hard going classics. She's already getting A* grades in English a year early before her GCSEs. I have no idea why or how, neither my wife or I read very much but I think it's all about finding something you have a passion for and being encouraged to chase it and enjoy it. Revising with my daughter the overnight in naming the layers of the Earth's crust for her geology GCSE and I was on the brink of walking up to the local dentist to have a root-canal without anesthetic, simply because it would have been less painful! Each to their own I suppose!

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Ah, but the upside

Especially when you run into a fellow Rik Mayall/Ade Edmonson fan, rattling of endless Young Ones, Bottom and Dangerous Brothers references, with a little sprinkling of Blackadder!

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Double entendre?

I seem to recall an interesting Italian video with one of those....

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: That takes me back

"Don't get me started on Emoji's!!!"

Oh dear Lord, yes! Just because you put a fecking smiley face on the end of your obnoxious request to have your database restored don't mean I'm gonna do it any fecking quicker, OK Mr or Miss Hipster?

I'm not a 9 year old girl, I don't need a happy face to soften the blow of a request. I'm a grumpy, fat, balding middle aged IT contractor! We're both grown ups, we can both be civil and adult about the fact that you deleted the wrong data or loaded the wrong code through the change request, we can agree on the fix and the paperwork, then we can both get it done without resorting to the sort of silly messages that my daughter her mates probably send each other!

CEO insisted his email was on server that had been offline for years

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Those loody annoying "Everything's Great Emails"!

Email is like Homer Simpson's "Everything's-Alright-Alarm", it makes a screeching noise continuously all the time everything is working. People treat email and automated systems exactly the same way, simply letting the system fire off emails for every little status change. Each day there's 7,500 emails which no one reads. Until one day when there is a serious problem and it gets missed 'cos it's buried under the 7500 "Everything's Just Great!" emails!!!

'I crashed AOL for 19 hours and messed up global email for a week'

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

Re: AOL memories

My first was a 600bps modem I knicked out of skip from a warehouse that was closing down, sometime around 1989. The modem had big rubber acoustic couplers and my Dad had to "borrow" a suitable phone from work that would fit the coupler pads! Then this thing called the "Internet" appeared around 1991, my mate at Uni said it was the best thing ever and...it was utter crap! Lots of boring pages through this thing called a browser, tons of very boring text only pages and you needed Windows. No pirated software, no message boards worth bothering with and I went back to BBSs for a anther couple of years as you could use BBS with software that ran on DOS without needing a whopping 4MB of memory to run Windows.

Windows Admin Center: Vulture gets claws on browser-based server admin

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Great. Webmin for windows

You are a complete bellend teknopaul, pretty obvious you've not even opened a PS prompt let alone coded anything in PS.

I've done 30 years of Unix coding and shell scripting and finding Powershell on Windows was such a breath of fresh air. PS is a superb scripting language, especially the remoting and the hooks into .Net libraries, it's a superb way to jump around an MS network gathering data and stats. Powershell is one of the best things MS have made and other than by hardcore MS admins and Unix admins taking over MS admin work, it's probably one of the least appreciated tools in the MS server toolboox.

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Re: My Dad...

Ha ha! My Dad taught me the basics of computers and electronics back in the 1980s. However if I have to breathe a sigh of exassperation one more time when I'm round his house helping him and he closes every app and window in order to open a new windows I will deck him!

"Just put that window to one side, click the minimize....no Dad, just click minim..."

Word exited.

Open Excel.

Copy text.

Exit Excel.

Open Word, load doc.

Paste text.

"Dad, just ALT and TAB to the other app..."

Copy text.

Exit Word.

Open Excel, load doc.

Paste text into cell. Save and exit.

Open Word.

Argghhhh!!!!!!

Then God forbid this is over the phone. Sometimes it's just easier to jump in my car, drive 5 mins to his house and sit with him for 30 mins while we work through a database problem or his latest craze, buying and playing with wireless CCTV cameras, apps and software. I love him to bits, he taught me to love tech and to be patient with people who can't get it and now at the age of 78 he's taking his revenge out on me for all the years he spent trying to calm me and his other students down! Ha ha!

From Bangkok to Phuket, they cry out: Oh, Bucket! Thai mobile operator spills 46k people's data

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Open house

The cloud is a great idea with some wonderful toys but it's a public service and everyone can at the very least bang on the front door. If you leave the door on the latch or leave a back window open, you're gonna get some rat-boy smearing shite up your walls while he's nicking your phones and watches!

My Tibetan digital detox lasted one morning, how about yours?

FuzzyWuzzys

Hesiod

'observe due measure; moderation is best in all things' - Hesiod, 700bc

The problem is that we haev so much around us, so much food, so many distractions, so much free time, so many causes, so many things on our bucket list, the list of "stuff to we want" goes on an on and on. We spend all our time constantly flitting from one thing to another that we very rarely ever finish anything properly.

One thing I learned as i turned the corner into my middle age at 40 was to try to limit the things i want and the things I can reasonably do. So I make sure I go out an take walks, I have a phone and a camera with me. I make sure to spend time with my family. I don't eat as much crap junk food as I used to, I don't try to do too much at once. Sometimes I just veg out on the sofa watching shite cartoons on the TV on a Saturday afternoon. Some days I get up at the crack of dawn and spend the morning out walking. One thing I do is I try to do one thing at a time and enjoy what I'm doing there and then. I don't go out walking and constantly scan my Facebook. Twitter or whatever. I have the phone in my pocket so I know I can if I want to but I don't. I walk and I watch life around me. Other days I get up at 4am and I studying some new tech until breakfast time with my family. I enjoy what I'm doing for the there and then, make sure I want to do that one thing and then have no regrets. The worst thing is to pick an activity and then spend that time wishing you'd picked something else, never being satisfied.

As I reach the middle years I know I'm half way to my grave, so I try to use the time wisely and carefully enjoying what I'm doing else if you spend all your time planning what you'll do, you'll never have time to do it. Or worse still you'll spend all your time flitting between things and never really enjoy them. Using tech is not a problem, eating crap is not a problem, vegging in front of the TV is not a problem, running up mountains, rock climbing, travelling, none of these are good or bad, just don't do the same thing over and over, enjoy each one in moderation and when you get to meet your chosen maker, you'll know you'll have at least enjoyed your little slice of life not spend eternity thinking, "Oh bollocks, I wished I'd done XYZ!".

Apple, if you want to win in education, look at what sucks about iPads

FuzzyWuzzys

My daughter is studying her GCSEs and yes they sometimes use tablets but more often than not she finds it much easier to simply sit down with a proper book, pen and paper or talk to real people about the subjects in order to learn. A lot of her friends simply use technology for fun, they find it too hard to learn from technology.

These companies, Google and Apple, simply want to shift units, we all know that's bloody obvious but the PR depts in these companies and the Gov ministers seem to the think the future is going to be like the fecking Jetsons! FFS! Wake up! education is not about "trendiness" at grass roots level, teacher and pupil, education is about personal engagement. It's about sitting down together and dicussing why Henry VIII reformed the church? Why did Hitler become such a nutter? What's the real message behind the Charge of the Light Brigade? You can put all the incredibly stunning visuals you like on a glass screen, make all the movies and interactive websites you like but to bring history and culture alive you need the one thing you will never put in a machine, a child's imagination.

I speak as a parent and a typical IT worker of 30 years experience, I've been using computers since I was 8 years old, I still love computers and IT in general, it's my life and my career. However it was when I became a parent that I realised that technology is a supplement to education, it can never be a replacement. These ministers who immediately pack their kids off to boarding school have no idea how to engagement with people let alone kids. Showing your child a castle, then describing how they toutured people, how the kings and queens fought over land and power. How the battles raged over Europe. Then watching your child's eyes light up and their imagination spark up, that day they walk into the castle gift shop and for the first time go right past the plush toys, straight past the video screens, straight past the interactive tech displays and go right to the bookshelf to find out more about "1066 And All That".

Facebook exec extracts foot from mouth: We didn't really mean growth matters more than human life

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Social media is just very boring computer game

"fake identities, fake audiences, fake facts, and fake narratives."

Social media, the biggest smoke and mirrors show ever. Full of fake people, posting fake "news" about their fake lives in an attempt to lure in fake friends to share their fake online lives, that are infinitely more interesting than the humdrum, boring existence they live in the real world.

Social media sites are really just MMOs, vast sprawling game play areas where the rule is simply, be the biggest lying prat you can be online. Get as many friends and adoration as you can earn by lying and posting the most outrageous shite, then maybe, just maybe you too can earn big money from sponsors who will pay you to lure in even more gullible dickheads.

We make jokes about the Matrix being a mind-prison, this is where is starts. People escaping the real world into the online social media world of BS.

Ex-ZX Spectrum reboot man threatens sueball over unpaid invoices

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

Ah, it's Imagine Software all over again!

Anyone remember that dire documentary that detailed the downfall of Imagine Software? Welcome to the 21st Century "reboot"!

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

An ill-wind for Computer Associates?

Computer Associates rebranded as CA many years ago, now all those searches will lead to CA the software company, every cloud.

Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

FuzzyWuzzys
Unhappy

I use FB but never, ever the app

Yes, I use FB to stay in contact with fellow photographers, set meet ups and discuss photography related points and posts pics but the second I pulled up the app from the store and saw that it wanted everything from my phone, that was a step too far and never installed it. I knew what I signed up to FB for, I knew they'd own whatever gave them but I want to at least have some minor control over how much they know about me or can deduce from me. The app leaves no stone unturned and once they have whatever you give them, there's no taking it back.

Facebook's inflection point: Now everyone knows this greedy mass surveillance operation for what it is

FuzzyWuzzys
Unhappy

Information is the true power

The second you have an IP from your ISP and you open any sort of app, it's game over. You don't need social media accounts to be found out there.

There are plenty of companies now offering media recognition software and services, heck AWS Rekognition will sift and catalogue media for pennies. Companies are trialing this software to make your shopping experience better. You walk into a shop it scans your face and immediate either knows who you are or it will work out how your feeling, make resonable guesses as to your age, weight, social status, demographic. If your details are on file at that bank, shop or service then they will immediately wire those details to the nearest shop assistant who will know instantly who you are. Think i'm joking, nope, banks are already trialing this technology in their places of business. You walk into your bank and they're already working out how best to "help" make better use of you, I mean help you. Now link your details of your account to your social media account and now the bank has more info about you, what you like, what you don't, what you spend your money on, the list goes on.

Quit social media all you like, they're's enough information out there now from other sources that if you abstain, it makes no difference anymore, they'll find ways to fill in the blanks from everyone else. It's like a jigsaw with a missing piece. You might not know what the face looks like on that missing piece but just below it is a body, a man's body, a dog, a car next to it, there are friends to either side, there's a house behind. You can run but you you can't hide.

We let them build the holy temples of information, enough people confessed their sins and paid tribute, now they have us all by the balls, either directly or indirectly.

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Re: Only an idiot gives their details to FB

When governments and companies start demanding to know why you have no social media presence, what kind of a freak are you for not posting your mindless, hum-drum existence online every 30 secs, then we'll be in trouble....oh wait.

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Limited resources

It's not just pure info, it's media content.

All that media, photos, videos and music being uploaded says just as much as some wittering post about some guy's dog. With tech like AWS Rekognition all that media is being scanned too, looking for trends, clues and information about how to force feed us more shit we don't need and never wanted.

Imagine all the teenagers uploading pictures of themselves, every thing in this pics is scanned, clothes, hair, make-up, faces, body shapes and sizes, cars, phones, colours, everything scanned for how the next piece of unwanted cack can be sold to the next generation of kids.

You could take away the text boxes and it'll still survive, it'll just turn into another Instagram. Or add text boxes and turn Instagram into Twitter/Facebook. Add video to Twitter and you have Vine/Snapchat. They're all the same and no matter what you do they will simply morph into each other.

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Criminality...

More like, "Because he never said I couldn't...."

They take it as read that if you sign up, you and everything you pass them is there's to do as they wish. As a photographer, I and many I know we utterly hate social media but we have no choice but to use it to a greater or lesser extent. The second we upload an image, the social media networks claim they can do whatever they like short of claiming copyright. FB has 2 billion users, FB can use any picture they're given and make an advert using it on their network and you won't get a penny. However if we don't engage with social media, someone else will and we won't get the potential reach and possible new customers and we can't make a decent living. They have creatives, photographers, artists, designers and musicians over a barrel and they know it.

IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: Interface Hall of Shame

"I pushed this button."

"What happened?"

"A sign lit up saying 'Please don't push this button again.'.".

The Ataribox lives, as a prototype, supposedly

FuzzyWuzzys

Well said!

Who is this aimed at? True afficiandos buy the original consoles of eBay and such like. Those of us who want to simply play the games and relive a few childhood memories will simply get the emulators, which work on nay platform. Unless as you say they reproduce it faithfully it will never truly fit in.

The biggest problem is securing the rights to use the games, trying to find all those developers from 30 years ago is a huge task, some are no longer with us and no one knows who owns the rights. You need a team of a dozen people just working securing legal rights to use games. While completely illegal, that's something that emulators have a huge advantage with over these "reboots".

All very noble but it'll simply be another retro collector novelty that'll only last a year or two and then you'll find it in the bargain bin at the local electronics gadget store for a fiver.

IT peeps, be warned: You'll soon be a museum exhibit

FuzzyWuzzys
Unhappy

Very true...

I thought when I was 8 years old back in the micro saturated 1980s, that I would spend my whole life playing with computers. So far I haven't done too badly, I'm still working in IT as I always wanted but I can see the end in sight off in the distance and have done for the last 5 years, especially the more I work on systems that vendors are baking into self-operating databases and systems. I can see that I might just about squeeze IT until I retire in 25 years time but it's getting harder and harder each year to see where my future lies with regards this career. I have my backup career building on the side and it's starting to turn some money in. Everyone should have a backup career option just in case. My mate, a developer for 25 years, he's learned a niche craft that he's hoping will see him past his retirement, he just needs a couple more years of dev contracts to stash the cash.

I told my daughter to keep away from IT as I said you're going to need 40-50 years of working life and trust me IT will become less and less reliant on fleshy meatbags to run it.

Lloyds Banking Group to splash £3bn on tech

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

So it's the standard IT shafting exercise...

1. Move it to the cloud. ( "Hey, it's the cloud gotta to be cheaper and more trendy, we mean better value!"

2. Make anyone with any sense redundant.

3. Tell the business all about the wonderful new cloud world they will have access to...in about 5 years time

4. A load of failed re-writes by cheap outside of Europe devs that cost 1/10th the cost of European devs.

5. Re-hire all the old IT staff as constractors at twice the rate after you realise that managers you put in charge of the new world order in your infrastructure, realised the cloud is simply the same old IT shit problems but just running on someone else's computers in another company.

Nobody expects the social media inquisition! OK, everybody did, UK politicos

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

MPs, you really want to know what kids are up to?

My wife and I check our daughter's phone, once or twice a week. We don't pry but a quick glimpse through the messages to make sure she's safe.

Well here's my top 5 of what a typical teenage girl puts on social media...

1. The boys she fancies.

2. The boys she hates.

3. The mates she likes.

4. The mates she now hates but like 2 days ago.

5. What the Kardashians are up to!

No, nothing earth shattering and certainly no cause for Mrs May to panic about kids causing a revolution, well not unless the girls/boys and/or the Kardashians tell them to anyway!

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Hmmm

Jesus wept there's fecking eejits walking this earth!

Flight Simulator's DRM fighter nosedives into Chrome's cache

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

They'll get away with it...you wouldn't!

They can install what they like, capture they like, apologise and it's all good. If you did this, your feet wouldn't touch the ground before you'd be in front of the beak!

Shopper f-bombed PC shop staff, so they mocked her with too-polite tech tutorial

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: ...I've seen people manage to force CD/DVD drives shut with two discs in the tray...

I once had a the joy of hearing a CD spin up and I kid you not, explode inside the drive! A load bang and when I pulled the drive from the case it sounded like Royal Mail delivering a parcel containing an expensive china vase. Needless to say the CD and drive were toast as there were bit of CD disc and thin silver coating material scattered to the four corners of the drive's internals.

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

Re: PC world

Encarta! A whole encyclopedia, genericised of course by a uritanical American company for the international English market to remove all the boring, rude and communist bits!

Free gift for all readers: Google's AutoML launch translated into plain English (where possible)

FuzzyWuzzys
Facepalm

Hmmmm, gigtons of juicy data to look over all uploaded by the idio...we mean user...sorry, customers.....hmmm nom, nom, nom!

Flying on its own, Thunderbird seeks input on new look

FuzzyWuzzys

Re: To be honest

Absolutely. I like to spruce things up once in a while but you just know they're going to bugger up the interface. When they moved the config options around about 2 years ago it freaked people out for a while. I'm not looking forward to the new look TB.

SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark smashed by storage newbie

FuzzyWuzzys
Happy

Re: Eh?

Short version....

"We took a shitload of superfast NVMe solid state drives, racked 'em up onto a super fast backplane and as expected they run like shit of the proverbial ( and no doubt cost a king's ransom too! ). If other vendors think their old hat idea of hanging SSDs off traditional slow SATA interfaces is still worth it, they're in for a surprise."