Posts by Chika 1774 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Oct 2007
Need I restate the Adams principle of power? That those wishing it should on no account be allowed to attain it?
Actually the problem, as is often the case, is divided up into the political - a politician has an idea about achieving something but has no idea how to do it - and the bureaucratic - the politician is used merely as a front for the civil service whose agenda is generally unpalatable to the general public.
Sounds kind of like Bowie's music, apart from the "repeated ad nauseam" part.
What Bowie did wasn't repeating ad nauseam. That's the saddest part of it. He was known for using things from other artists and creators but he did it in his own way, making it different. There's nobody these days that can do this anymore.
Many a true word is spoken in jest!
The fact is that drinking only increases the chances. It doesn't actually cause anything by itself. Nothing is completely safe; life is full of risks and hazards and it's how you deal with them that makes the difference!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm constructing a cancer butty which I shall wash down with a nice cool pint of cancer. ;)
Very true.
It's almost like somebody just looked around a pub, made a list then gave it to some oik to produce "recommendations" on.
Just wait. Sooner or later there will be a report on the negative health aspects of chicken in a basket, crisps, pork scratchings, dominoes and darts!
Sometimes I wonder if it's just a case of the idiots behind these reports are either afraid to have fun or just want to live forever!
I tried to get a TRS80 from the Tandy in Collier Row but it was too damn expensive! Ended up eventually buying a ZX81 complete with wobbly RAM pack and yes, I lost more than one half-typed program from a magazine listing before finally selling it on and buying a BBC Micro. Ah... we didn't need the Net to be entertained back then!
And you tell that to the kids today. Will they believe you? Nooooo.....
In Mint KDE I have to go CLI maybe once or twice a week. On Windows 7 I have to go CLI maybe once or twice a year.
That really depends on what you are doing. In some situations, whether Linux or Windows, the CLI actually works a lot better because the GUI is not designed to do certain tasks. Even Microsoft admits that much, especially when they are pushing Powershell.
Actually there is only one reason why I am forced to go to the CLI at the moment on Linux, and that's because of f*****g systemd!
>We're not writing for average users. ZDNet and Gizmodo are that way
Yes, and they swore Windows Me was great, Vista was the best Windows ever, 8 was a winning horse, 8.1 a welcome update, and 10 the ultimate Windows experience ...
Indeed, and I've seen many an article there that says the same of W10 to the extent that they will publicly denounce any naysayer. What nobody there seems to understand is that we don't want an ultimate experience because nobody knows what that actually is. Not Microsoft, not ZDNet, heck not even El Reg.
What we actually want is something that does what we want it to do when we want it to do it with no fuss and without snooping. That's why I was continually pissed off with all the shovelware that infested OEM installations going back to W3, all the extra unnecessary wizards in XP and the bloat in Vista and 7 requiring hefty hardware upgrades. W8 just made it harder and despite some of the token changes in W10, they have broken any trust I have in Microsoft ever producing a good piece of software.
Their assumed attempt to buy off the media is as despicable as their buying of marketing space years ago to push other systems out of the market and while I'll admit that Linux is not perfect and Apple has its flaws, Microsoft's continued bad behaviour towards its users guarantees that even if Linux or Apple do not take over the desktop market, they are unlikely to disappear either as disgruntled users look for alternatives.
No, seriously. The comments on various forums saying, "That's it! I'm going Linux" has been way beyond anything I have seen before after a Windows version launch.
Has anyone actually produced stats on users that have done this?
I've seen the Microsoft figure being blasted from other sites (I actually killed one Twitter account, "OS Update", because it kept tweeting the bloody figure at me every time it picked it up from one of the web sites it covered which makes me wonder if Microsoft are really that desperate to make this figure known for some reason) but have also seen the whole "I'm pissed off with W10 so I going to install x Linux instead" (yes, I know a large portion has been using Mint but, as I am known for saying at any given point, Linux is NOT Mint) to wonder how much impact this has had.
Hey, Reg! Perhaps this could be a poll in the making! :)
I've still to see any concrete evidence of that much beyond the rantings and FUD of certain US officials and, given the whole NSA thing, I could comfortably call bullshit on that much. The name (it means "achievement", by the way) is no less of a deterrent than Xiaomi, Zhongxing or, need I say it, Foxconn.
Actually, I'm on my second Huawei, an Honor 6 which I bought at the start of 2015.
OK, so they aren't the prettiest machines ever made and they do insist on using that EMUI thing to try to make it look like an iPhone (or there's a screen that switches it so that it looks like a WinPhone) but they work.
My Ascend G330 is in its third year and is still good enough to act as a backup should I need it. The fact that it made it comfortably through two years' use was what persuaded me to go for another, hence the Honor 6.
I bought mine based on the fact that so many of the high end phones are cutting various features off their phones. My current phone will take an SD card and the battery lasts quite a long time (a couple of days depending on what I do with it).
The fact that the battery isn't removable wasn't a deal killer for me given the price, but it can be for quite a few phones - consider that the phone is effectively bricked once the battery cannot take a charge unless you can figure out a way in and can find a replacement.
Actually, my biggest gripe with Huawei is that it is bloody awful when it comes to OS support. You might get an update (actually I got a complete new UI skin and a few changes some months ago) but you can whistle for any updates when it comes to Android itself. They're not alone in that, but it's worth calling them out on it, especially considering the sheer number of new models they seem to produce each year.
That's why I'm a little dubious about this new Mate.
I'm not even convinced that stupidity is the only answer. It's cost-cutting too.
Each user of this kind of data model does so because they believe that it represents the panacea of decision making. They give it the name "big data" because the actual name, generalisation, has far too many negative connotations to allow it to be used, then they wonder why the conclusions they arrive at don't always work. As often said, all generalisations have exceptions.
Actually, the way in which big data is used is worse than ordinary generalisations since it can often include layers of generalisations, one of which was mentioned in the article. But it's cheaper and easier to deal with data than it is to deal with people.
Yeah, but there's your point. This is an era that spends too much time inventing silly names and descriptions for re-inventions from the past tarted up and hogtied so that they can fleece the flock.
Raspberry Pi is a good idea. It encourages people to learn and invent.
IoT is not a good idea. It's merely a label used by certain people so they can look "kewl".
I dare say that some folk will now point me at copious white papers on where I am supposedly wrong with that statement but (a) that assumes that I haven't already read them (or at least some of them) and (b) doesn't dodge that one thing.
Maybe. You forget one thing, however.
Microsoft HATES being wrong about anything. Especially when that thing is a high profile thing like Windows, the very thing that gave it its original dominance of the desktop market in the first place (well that and crushing alternative systems with various tactics, some of which could be called highly dubious on close inspection).
It's especially the case here since they stand to profit hugely if they can only get people to believe that Windows 10 and all it entails is for their own good rather than something that could conceivably be a way to fleece their customers, first through the apps and the advertising, later possibly through subscriptions (Windows as a Service - will that service be a one-off payment like previous Windows versions? I doubt it).
To be honest, I'll be interested to see what happens when W7 goes EoL. It could well be that it will live on well past that date, much as WXP did, only more so.
$5 says give it a year or 2 and win10 will suddenly be available with 'classic desktop' and no data slurping......
I really hope that you're right but consider that the "Classic desktop" has been a legacy item since they stopped distributing W7 and two whole versions have passed since then.
They might just do it but I suspect that whatever they produce will be a panic measure and may not work right even then, especially considering that the W7 menu didn't include a "Windows App" section which is what they really wanted to have there, hence the W10 layout.
I'll be staying with my W7/openSUSE Linux/occasional RISC OS setup for a few years yet, I suspect.
Why can all other major OS's support the standard but not microsoft?
Because Microsoft didn't write it. It's the same thing as the old browser wars, the inclusion of certain format changes in the CD ISO, the inclusion of Microsoft code in some Unixen, and so on. If they don't have a stake in it, they aren't interested, and the users that are affected can go fuck themselves.
Microsoft aren't quite the epitome of a corrupt, self-serving Merkan corporate, but not for want of trying!
And there you have your problem.
It's not necessarily the fault of the Java system developers but they have to shoulder part of the blame due to a lack of backwards compatibility. Coders that use Java, however, need to take some of the shit aimed here because of the habit some of them have of demanding that a particular version of Java is used. I can recall having to maintain several versions going back to 1.4.2 to allow for applications that needed that specific version and would refuse everything else.
I suspect, however, that some pressure from developers on Sun/Oracle would have possibly given them cause to consider doing a better job rather than rattling on with the situation as is, only to end up with the Merkan FTC rapping them on the knuckles and sending them to the Naughty Cornertm.
At the end of the day, Java is a language, not an application or a plug in, and every language I have come across, either directly when I still wielded the mighty keyboard of doom or indirectly when I just had to get something to work, has always provided some degree of continuity. Java appears to be an exception to this, hence all this.
To market, to market to buy me a cow
To milk it, to milk it, I didn't know how.
I was pulling the tail instead of the teat
And a few minutes later I was covered in...
Oh sorry! I was busy trying to remember how to give a toss!
Sales figures taken at a specific point are not really an indicator of how a product will fare in the long term, which is what you need to look at if you want a product to really succeed. This article is just a tawdry bit of news wrapped in clickbait. As for the "apologies", they seem a little too mealy-mouthed, corporate and don't appear to really address anything.
Oh come on! We all know what he really wants, but I doubt that Obamacare would cover it!
Murdoch is in it for what he can profit out of it. He's never been any different, whether in the US, the UK or back in his native Australia. If he hasn't learned anything from the whole phone-tapping scandal that shut the News of the World down, he never will.
I take considerable umbrage at the idea that all public sector systems are affected in this way, especially as I was part of a rollout at a certain public sector organisation that spent quite a bit of time and effort and money to make sure that this didn't happen.
Then once that was done, I was given the boot...
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