* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Apple now Arm'd to the teeth: MacBook Air and Pro, Mac mini to be powered by custom M1 chips rather than Intel

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Confusing much?

Mac OS X was increasingly inaccurate as it's not much like the OS X that replaced OS9 in about 2002. Imagine if Win10 was called Windows XP (Ver 5.10.1234 or something) .

Also the current OS X is x86-64 and has blocked x86-32, or am I wrong on that?

You can now pepper your Windows 10 desktop with Android apps... if you have a Samsung phone, that is

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Microsoft's answer to Apple's

Also stupid web sites.

Many people doing GUIs and web sites have a mad deranged concept of usability and accessibility. But then Win10 is the worst since Win2.x on accessibility, usability and user configuration.

At least you could turn off garbage on XP and eye candy on Vista. The problem with WinME was under the GUI, it should not have existed. Win98SE or Win2K depending on if games are important. Android and Material Design also seems poor on GUI and UX design. Clueless. Ereaders that don't even run Android are copying stupid, like a tap to toggle check box drawn as a flat slide switch with only a title, not what the two positions are.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: What? Why?

The operative word is DISPLAYED!

They are not running on the PC. We had this 20+ years ago if you added an X-server on Windows NT 4.0 and connected to a remote box running Linux!

Also 10 years ago USB networking and remote window on XP desktop from a gadget or portable game console.

Some apps, which block casting, simply won't work while others may need a touch-enabled PC for interaction. The PC and phone must also be on the same Wi-Fi network and, in a surreal twist, any sound produced by the app will come from the phone not the PC.

And why only Samsung phones?

Seems like a pointless gimmick.

Also casting over wifi to a 4K HDR TV is dreadful on a new phone or tablet compared to a phone with a 5 year old phone that has a micro-HDMI socket. Casting eats up massive WiFi bandwidth, awkward to start and doesn't actually work on many applications. Try using casting and internet at the same time on WiFi on the phone or tablet!

Apple cracks down on iOS terminal apps because they can download code

Mage Silver badge
Linux

Re: Who owns the frigging machines ?

It's like buying a phone or DVD player or Digital Organiser. Not like buying a Mac or PC. Android is actually also very limited.

If you want something very flexible buy an Android or Windows tablet that can have Linux installed. Some gadgety things even have user accessible Linux, others like some ereaders, routers, TVs etc, not so much.

At this stage people would know what an iPad or iPhone normally does.

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: not for the corporate network

Developers != typical_corporate_users

Developers <> typical_corporate_users;

However it illustrates that it's like buying a cooker or DVD player. Not a general purpose computer. Which might make it MORE suitable for some corporate applications.

Magic! If you have an entry-level iPad, the Combo Touch could make it your workhorse

Mage Silver badge

Re: the inclusion of backlighting, which is a must-have for late-night work.

Even a cheap battery LED lamp, never mind a mains reading lamp is superior to a backlight keyboard.

The real use cases for a backlit keyboard are:

1) Multilingual, where the the layout illuminated changes. Say English plus one off Cyrillic, Hebrew, Thai, Korean, Hindi, Arabic etc.

2) Full four characters per Key universal Western keyboard using a 2nd shift (usually AltGr on Linux).

Mage Silver badge

£499 mid range Windows laptop?

Unless it's gaming, £499 buys a very good laptop with a non-reflective full HD screen. Add Linux Mint with Mate desktop and a VM for you old windows, imaged from old laptop using free MS Disk2vhd.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd

No doubt this is a good idea if you already bought an iPad and don't have any sort of laptop. Though usable USB or Bluetooth keyboards are £10 to £20. Some even with a switch for Android, Apple, Windows, though I've found that if you have SW remapping utility / app they all work on anything. USB keyboards can be got (suits Android) with a prewired USB2Go mini or micro USB plug. Or you can use a £5 adaptor. The proprietary wireless keyboards with a USB dongle work on Android TV, Windows XP and later, Linux and Android (not all versions). Not tried those on a Mac.

Obviously the sockets on a iPad mean that Bluetooth is simplest to connect.

And for gaming really you want a PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox etc, not a Windows laptop. Or some sort of custom desktop.

Super-antique-fragile-and-it's-XP-alidocious, even though the sight of it is something quite atrocious

Mage Silver badge
Linux

Re: Dreadful?

Yes, I have several XP VMs on Linux. One is an image of my 2002 to 2016 Laptop, only re-installed once in late May 2002. It looks more like NT4.0/Win9x/Win2K than the default XP. Even Win7 (aka Vista SP2) could be decently customised. Win10 is like Win 2.x on Hercules. Or a bad version of Android with windows.

The imaging tool is an MS download to allow compatibility on Win10 by putting a VM of your oldd Windows. Free on MS Website

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd

It actually has three checkboxes, not two. You need to check "For VM" (or something, it's the extra check) and uncheck "Shadow volume"

Works as long as the Windows isn't using EFI boot. I think even if PC is UEFI, if the install used BIOS mode the VM will work.

Might work for Vista and Win7?

Office needs reactivated. But that's a free phone call and a robot with no awkward questions.

I used an subdirectory on an external 1T USB HDD and it runs faster than original. I used the Mint distro VM and installed the Guest Tools (which basically add sound, network, graphics and USB drivers).

Real serial port SW on the XP VM works with a USB serial adaptor on Linux, mapped. Even a Sony USB Web cam unsupported by Linux works. Sadly no way to add the PCMCIA peripherals such as an Adaptec 1460, nor I have I found a solution for Firewire.

Having SCSI on anything other than a desktop with real full PCI slots now seems impossible. Supposed Firewire - USB adaptors like a plug seem to be for stuff that actually really also has USB in it? I can't see how they can work with a DV camera.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Argos catalogue ?

Radio Shack, Henrys, Ambit.

UK's 'minimum viable product' for Brexit transit software will not be ready until December, leaving no time for testing

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Too Late

Or is it 35 or 30?

And don't places wind down on Christmas Eve and Fridays near holidays.

Then subtract time in meetings.

I'm gone already! Bye.

Shopping online for Xmas? AI chatbots know whether you want to be naughty or nice

Mage Silver badge

Re: impressed by blockchain

Yes, it's really clever. But what use is it? Other than to add a sciency ring to a tulip pyramid selling scam.

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

The shoe-fitting fluoroscope.

Fortunately it wasn't plugged in. Perhaps the penny had dropped. It was gone by the time of the next visit.

With less than two months left, let's check in on Brexit: All IT systems are up and running and ready to go, says no one

Mage Silver badge

Re: US Census in 1890

Hollerith won that contract. The cards were based on 18th Century programming cards for the Jacquard Loom controller, or inspired by them. Later renamed IBM.

Mage Silver badge

Re: written in crayon.

Trump only uses Sharpies, though I suppose any fine bullet tip felt pen would do. It's Johnson that uses crayons?

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Transition Phase

Also there was Zero obligation to trigger Article 50 on ANY particular date. Any sensible Government would have sat down and figured out what the Withdrawal agreement might look like, what to do about N.I. and Gibraltar and what future deal they wanted BEFORE invoking Article 50.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Ulster becomes an independent state?

The UK has 2/3rds of Ulster and Ireland has 1/3rd. N.I. is 6 of the 9 Ulster Counties.

Scotland being independent is thus more likely than Ulster.

I can't see N.I. being independent unless USA, EU, or UN agree to pay for it. I know the Irish Government has just voted to give €250m to NI, but really it's for a road. Look at where Letterkenny, Donegal (part of Ireland the nation) and Dublin, Athlone, Dundalk etc are.

There is no rail or even dual carriageway up the West, either. Getting to Galway from Cork, Limerick, Waterford or Dublin is easy. Sligo harder. But Letterkenny?

Tech support scammer dialed random number and Australian Police’s cybercrime squad answered

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: if you don't hang up the call

It was so if you answered in the hall, or under the stairs, or the kitchen, you could set down the handset and pick it up in the boudoir, library or study.

Also such phone systems in many countries used a third wire to disable the bell on all the phones when you picked up to dial out.

As the phones, and indeed rural party lines, were in parallel, having two off hook would reduce to volume to about half. Also if someone else on the same internal line or party line picked up you'd hear the click of the extra DC load to power the carbon microphone and the volume would reduce. Seldom agitated, infrequently used carbon microphones would also often crackle.

As kids in the 1970s we used two phones connected via top two wires of the fence with a 6V spring top lantern battery for power. No bell other than a faint tinkle, but good volume.

In the late Victorian era before valves (tubes) they even put a carbon microphone and 2000 Ohm earpiece in a sealed box sharing a diaphragm. Then add two off 3V batteries, external carbon microphone and 2 x 2000 Ohm earphones as a headset and you had a hearing aid not surpassed by valves till about 1927, and even then the valves needed a 90V HT and 2V lead acid. By 1950 the valve hearing aids used 2 x 0.7V filament valves off a 1.5V dry cell and one or two miniature 22V batteries about PP3 size.

Deloitte's 'Test your Hacker IQ' site fails itself after exposing database user name, password in config file

Mage Silver badge

Re: Deloitte is awful

but bigly good compared to Crapita.

Actually many big name Auditors accountants have been found to be less than brilliant. PWC? HP buy of something?

BBC makes switch to AWS, serverless for new website architecture, observers grumble about the HTML

Mage Silver badge

Re: Not all is well.

Also how is it Serverless? It's real servers belonging to Amazon.

Also Amazon makes a good profit from AWS.

Like getting rid of most other BBC Engineering, this is simply outsourcing, a thing loved by Accountants and Marketing people, because obviously the only thing that matters is marketing the Brand with the lowest in house overhead..

Though a Government forced the outsourcing of the National Transmitter infrastructure, they'd do it anyway.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

News?

I stopped accessing BBC websites ages ago. Are they doing:

a) Actual News?

b) Letting people close or from the UK access the .co.uk site again?

c) Any innovation.

They used to have a decent R&D dept.

The car you buy in 2025 will include a terabyte of storage. Robo-taxis might need 11TB

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Good luck with that.

That's a different sort of Autonomy. Nothing to do with what the article is talking about. 2025 is only a little more than 4 years away and the issues of genuinely autonomous vehicles on ordinary roads are not solved yet. Ships, trains, aircraft and even trams are easier problems. Aircraft and ships can be autonomous. I'm a bit baffled why people are talking about cars, trucks and taxis when most trains have drivers.

We did NAT see that coming: How malicious JavaScript can open holes in your firewall for miscreants to slip through

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Stars and bucks

This is why you should block all third party scripts, especially ads. Google's Ad service has been used in the past to serve malware on the BBC and CNN and other popular sites.

NoScript, uBlock and uMatrix can be more effective than AV and won't quarenteen your real applications or OS components.

Linux Mint pushes out its own Chromium build to help users avoid Canonical's Snap Store

Mage Silver badge
Linux

Re: Snaps R Us

I'm puzzled. I've had Chromium for ages on Linux Mint, via the Software Manager GUI. It's not the snap version. I use it just for a particular logged in Google service. I use Waterfox with uMatrix and Classic Theme Restorer, Classic Repository and Cookie Swap plug-ins for everyday use.

I also get regular updates of Chromium and Waterfox and Firefox via the Update Manager.

Google reCAPTCHA service under the microscope: Questions raised over privacy promises, cookie use

Mage Silver badge

Re: ebay cookies

No problems with ANY site, including ebay or paypal or Amazon with totally blocked 3rd party cookies.

Sometimes I have to disable script blocking (uMatrix) for Paypal to work, even if everything is apparently allowed.

Mage Silver badge

Re: reCAPTCHA only issues

So why are eBay.co.uk and PayPal using it on EXISTING Users logging in?

You enter user name, password and then have the stupid multiple picture quizzes.

OBVIOUSLY it's useless as a 2FA. It's supposedly authenticating that it's a human logging in.

There is no valid reason to have 3rd party cookies. I block all of those all the time on laptop and Mobile. They are purely malicious trackers nothing to do with the site. A privacy notice doesn't make them legal in the EU. This can be true for many actual site cookies. A privacy notice with Click Next to Continue is not obtaining consent.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Utter Bollocks

""In my opinion, organizations in Europe that use reCAPTCHA for spam protection now need to move reCAPTCHA behind their consent walls," he said.

No, they need to stop using it. It's abusive even if not used somehow for adverts. Also giving consent or not accessing the resource is toxic. Very many cookie consent forms are actually illegal.

Mage Silver badge

reCAPTCHA only issues

Nonsense.

Problems with it:

Ebay.co.uk is using it as well as login, but denies it. Not always.

Sometimes PayPal uses it, like when you click on a link in an email to confirm a new email.

It's US cultured. Loads of people outside the USA wouldn't know taxis are yellow rather than black or random. Or that a crosswalk is a Zebra crossing.

It's obviously a parasite using crowd funding to train so called self driving cars.

The images can be too small.

***

IT'S ABUSIVE, CULTURALLY BIASED and an INVASION OF PRIVACY. It's all about Google, not genuinely anti-spam.

The real reason for reCAPTCHA

It's also being misused by website operators. It is NOT part of 2FA. Nuke it from orbit!

Remember when the keyboard was the computer? You can now relive those heady days with the Raspberry Pi 400

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Nice but

Why is it WHITE!

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Poor On-Call this week

Some places Whenever means never.

Marriott fined £0.05 for each of the 339 million hotel guests whose data crooks were stealing for four years

Mage Silver badge

Re: To stop it happening again ...

Ofcom may be funded by Mobile Licence fees. Comreg is. Guess how much they care about anything other than Interference to Mobile Bands, or consumers or non-Mobile Spectrum users?

Alphabet thanks ads and AI for its $124m-a-day quarterly profit, and comes out swinging against antitrust action

Mage Silver badge

Re: If you don't log into (google?)

Block ALL google scripts seems to work. For a while only blocking Cookies worked.

SiFive inches closer to offering a true RISC-V PC: Latest five-core dev board includes PCIe, SSD interfaces

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: I wouldn't be surprised if this was of interest to ...

Currently the RISC-V is of more interest as a Server and people investigating RISC-V, rather than very low power general purpose board with a wide range of OS, software, application use and from one-off hobbyists to industrial integrators.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: A CISC is a RISC with specialized microcode

It's more complex than that and RISC is a bit of a misnomer.

Intel's i960 wasn't bad back then. Popular on RAID controllers. They also obtained DEC's Strong ARM family, most of which were sold to Marvell. They might still have an ARM based comms chip and some sort of ARM licence.

They overfocused on x86 and then HPs inspired Itanium which seems to have been illfated. Shortest XP support?

NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Valve ? If you don't have a connection, you can still play your games.

Not true for some games, at least to start them.

Also plenty of older XP / Vista games yet they pulled the plug on XP being able to use an already installed game.

Also I hate DVD cased games that have no indication on the packaging that are actually only an Internet installer for Steam or something else you can simply go to directly. Not sure when Steam support ends for Win7. But for a long while it's been a better idea to use a PS4 for gaming. I see the optical drives are option versions of 2020 Xbox and PS5.

Welcome to the 1960s, where you need the connection to a server for anything. Is Office 365 & cloud replacing purely local MS Office? You'd think so searching MS site for Office Patches, Add ons and converters.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Poor Code

Not all poor code is exploitable as such. Some poor programming may make something vulnerable to DOS. Or some feature may not work properly or at all. Or it may crash every <nnnn> period of time.

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: How do you avoid US spy gear, it is everywhere.

Maybe said by Cardinal Richelieu?

Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: I'd comment ...

See also proven NSA / CIA etc backdoors in Cisco gear. Juniper is a major competitor.

Could Huawei be being banned in USA and UK etc (Five Eyes and friends dominated by USA), because they won't add US backdoors?

GCHQ audit revealed no backdoors in Huawei, but poor code quality.

No surprise as that was well known on Huawei routers supplied by many UK & Ireland ISPs. But also true of almost everyone.

Brave browser first to nix CNAME deception, the sneaky DNS trick used by marketers to duck privacy controls

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Rewards

And can even turn off the Rewards Icon too.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Nice Browser

I switched to Brave on all my Androids as Firefox sort of broke their GUI. I switched long ago on 64 bit Linux from Firefox to Waterfox due to stupid changes. I use Classic Theme restorer to make the Waterfox GUI sane, but I think Firefox disabled that and lots of other stuff which is why I switched to Waterfox. Still using uMatrix for blocking scripts, though I used to use NoScript.

Trouble at Skull-Top Ridge: ESA boffins use data wizardry to figure out Philae probe's second touchdown site

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Frothy?

Almost no gravity.

Software engineer leaked UK missile system secrets and refused to hand cops his passwords, Old Bailey told

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Software engineer leaked UK missile system secrets

1) The UK actually has missile secrets?

2) This is already after he lost his job?

3) If they couldn't access his whatever how do they know what he leaked?

4) Is it all simply because he complained about the Police earlier?

I know someone that was brought to court on a minor charge and told by their own solicitor that they had to plead guilty, even though the police where allegedly lying, because otherwise the police would bring a more serious charge. No third party witnesses to the alleged behaviour which involved no theft, damages or threats or anything else. Allegedly the police purely assuming what the person was going to do and then said it did happen to justify their initial bad treatment of their suspect.

There needs to be greater independent oversight of the Police. The current solution of having police from a different group investigate a complaint is totally rubbish.

Touchscreen holdout? This F(x)tec Pro1 X phone with sliding QWERTY keyboard might push your buttons

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

detachable phone keyboard

I have a Wireless one about phone size, though needs a dongle because it's not BT, OTOH it works better than any BT keyboard I ever had. It has a touch pad and mouse buttons.

I've also a pair of 8" folio cases with USB keyboards. One has mini-USB plug (works with a USB2GO micro plug with integral mini USB socket and one has a USB2GO microUSB plug.

But I've stopped going out, so I use the laptop to type on Viber or email and phone answers the "I'm at the checkout, where are you" calls.

I had to get a paid playstore app for decent support of a UK layout, accented letters etc on Android. EKH or something. Though later Androids are slightly better for non-USA keyboards.

Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network

Mage Silver badge
Alert

after you purchased ... login compulsary

At least Personal Skype was free and MS had more or less broken it anyway by the time you could only use an MS account.

See also Minecraft, which MS bought.

When are the so called Tech companies going to be reigned in? Apple and Microsoft are Tech, but really Google, Facebook and Amazon just leverage technology.

These are shocking lists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Amazon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet (Google)

The real tech companies don't have a great look either. Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Qualcomm etc.

Mage Silver badge
Terminator

Standard Borg Procedure.

WhatsApp, Instagram etc.

"Let us buy them and we won't slurp or combine data"

Facebook, one Lord to rule them all.

Did Arthur C. Clarke call it right? Water spotted in Moon's sunlit Clavius crater by NASA telescope

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Re: 3 cubic meters of regolith might givee 1 litre?

Best not to be messing up this ball of rock. Besides any program could only export a few elites or maybe criminals. The moon has a harsh environment.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Sunlit side?

Maybe they mean the Far Side, but I'm not sure if it gets more sun.

There is no Dark Side.

Possibly the pole(s) get more sun?

Linus Torvalds hails 'historic' Linux 5.10 for ditching defunct addressing artefact

Mage Silver badge

Ancient Systems

I've installed used UNIX, XENIX (386 only) and earlier CROMIX (dual Z80 /68000) in the 1980s.

MINIX in maybe 1991

Full NT 3.1 and Linux Kernel came out in 1993. I did use NT from about 1994 and briefly 3.5 on a 386. Everything NT since on at least a 486 and I used Linux from 1998. Maybe last installed OpenWrt on a 486 like device (PC Engines SBC for a router maybe using a Geode SoC) in about 2007.

I don't think I've installed a Workstation or Server Linux on less than a Pentium 4 in over 15 years.

I might have a 486 somewhere with WFW 3.11. The 286 did have I think a version of UNIX or XENIX, but I never used it. The main point of it was more RAM on DOS and it was mostly used as an 8086. Pointless in most computers compared to a 68000. Really the 386 was Intel's first consumer 16 /32 bit CPU used as 32 bits usually. The 8088 / 8086 wasn't a real 16 bit CPU at all. At least the 286 had a real 16 bit mode, even if only XENIX commonly used it. Really the 486 was dead by the time Linux was usable. Though I think the PII was inferior to P-Pro for NT and it was the PIII that coincided with rapid rise of Linux on Servers. The Segmented Addressing was an evil fudge to make porting 8080 8bit code automatic?

I've seen Power PCs running MAC OS9 at the latest, maybe 15 years ago? Not sure. What is a PowerPC 601 CPU used in?

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Random

A Roman numerals wristwatch demo in javascript. Designed to use a mask and a very small number of LEDS with PIC18F or ARM Cortex M0. The check box seems to simulate pressing the crown, which might be a rotary encoder that is also a push button. Or maybe USB could be used to set time, simply in terminal mode?

The Romans used scribes that used other number systems and also the abacus. They invented the idea that the day changes at midnight instead of dusk. They also managed to run the Etruscan 8 day week and the eastern Med 7 day in parallel for a while. The Babylonians and Ancient Celts had the more logical 13 months, but the Babylonians changed to 12 as it meant easier arithmetic in some respects. That's why there are 13 Zodiac signs. The Jewish system adds a leap month to keep Solar and Lunar time (months = moons) re-synced. Moslem system seems to ignore Solar - Lunar corrections.

Mage Silver badge

Re: bye bye 2038

Also just kill the mm/dd/yyyy, mm/dd/yy, mm/yy and all the variants <month name><day><year>

I notice ebay Ireland and ebay UK both use the daft USA <month name><day><year> format.

ISO yyyy mm dd at least is unambigious except as to calendar type and the same way round as writing quantities of anything, numbers or time.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: bye bye 2038

I think the HC/HE system is better, none of the no year zero stupidity in the middle. It's currently the year 12020. Also avoids the AD BC CE BCE issues, though doesn't solve ambiguity about British dates after general change from Julian to Gregorian Calendar but much much later in Britain. Other systems are available. China (had about 5 changes), Jewish, Moslem and Hindi apart from largely defunct calendars.

There are different issues:

1) The separate physical clock on some systems with its own battery and usually a 32.768 kHz crystal.

2) A clock on some CPUs using a sleep mode and a separate 32.768 kHz crystal. Some are not limited by a clock register.

3) A clock on some CPUs with no special hardware that relies on the gadget never being powered off.

4) Any firmware or BIOS that might not be easily updated

5) An embedded OS that could be using Linux Kernel that can't be updated or is unlikely to be updated.

6) Many Linux devices and Android things that could be updated, but the makers are either gone or won't update.

7) Different levels: HW / FW clock, OS clock, GUI clock/calendar, application clock/calendar. Spreadsheets seem very limited on the date/time assuming everything is an AD/CE Gregorian date. DIY functions for other systems are hard. Especially timelines for fictional worlds, or even simply Mars.