* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

UK tech supply chain in dark over Brexit preparations months ahead of final heave-ho

Mage Silver badge

Re: It's just me who doesn't qualify.

They'll naturalise you on basis of the rest of the family. Not at all like the UK Home Office. Or like that USA RomCom Green Card.

I know Polish, Kenyan, English and South Africans that have been naturalised. We just happen to speak English, it's not like the UK.

Mage Silver badge

Re: you are still a Brit as far as the eu is concerned?

Unless your parents or grandparents born in NI after 1922 (as before then it didn't exist), or ANYWHERE in Ireland otherwise. Geneva convention, not just the Good Friday Agreement. Or if you were born in either part of Ireland before some more recent date.

I'm not sure what proportion of mainland UK people that covers. It does cover some in USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia.

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: It's almost as if

Yes, Minister was a great documentary.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Latest from the PM

Canada isn't on the doorstep and is moving towards EU. Even an ESA associate. Getting treated badly by USA.

UK is leaving, only a train journey or ferry away and doesn't want to keep any EU or European or even some UN rights or laws. No-one asked the UK to leave and they invented the rules of Article 50 and got the others to agree to them.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Hmm

27 EU countries or one fractured England, Scotland, Wales, NI, Cornwall and Overseas tax havens that can't keep promises or honour international treaties?

If you can see this headline, you're certainly not reading it on Twitter: All tweets, notifications vanish

Mage Silver badge

Re: Oh well

Not as bad as Facebook?

Though not saying much.

Mage Silver badge

Re: they doubled it to 280 a while ago

Then there was threadfall. There is no limit now.

"Since the current Twitter threadfall kicked off in early 2016, we can expect it to continue until the mid 2060s when the next Interval begins."

Open Invention Network adds Microsoft's exFAT to Linux System Definition, Satan spotted throwing snowballs

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Removable disks with NTFS format, NT4.0

Indeed originally computer controlled ejection was locked (Think archive MO disks) with NTFS, only allowing eject after shutdown so you couldn't use NTFS for 3.5" MO disks, no manual eject.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Does anyone here use exFAT?

(4G can be SDHC or SDHC) --> (4G can be SD or SDHC)

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Does anyone here use exFAT?

Yes, 256 G micro SD cards use it and should not be be reformatted without special tools.

Possibly most SDXC cards (64 G and larger?) use exFAT by default, I'm not sure.

Certainly actual gadgets have limits on format types and sizes, I think notable boundaries being 2G or 4G (4G can be SDHC or SDHC). Usually FAT

4G to 32G SDHC, always FAT32 by default.

64G to 2T SDXC usually exFAT. There is though no assurance that something that works with a 256 G SDXC card using exFAT will work with a larger card.

Most gadgets only work with cards up to a certain size and in the default format for that size. So while Ext2, 3 & 4 or NTFS will work on a laptop, they are unlikely to work on a camera, MP3 player, Zoom/Tascam recorder, portable video camera, phone or tablet.

I've not seen an SDUC card yet, which I presume also uses exFAT. Probably 2T to 128 T. I noticed 512 G cards yesterday and noted that the the 256 G micro SD card I bought early this year has dropped about £10 in price to about £28.

You need the reserved space for the onboard controller to silently swap dying memory locations.

Cloudflare floats cloud grand unification theory based on zero-trust access and security

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Skynet

Then eventually there will be "No Silver Lining" once everyone is outsourcing everything to a handful of so called Clouds.

Zero Trust is a better name than they imagine!

India racks up seven hundred millionth broadband user, with only 20 million tied to wires

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Makes no sense

Mobile is NEVER Broadband. Mere peak speed is irrelevant.

There is only contention control on mobile by throttle, cap or refusing a connection. Real broadband can be engineered to be 100s to 1000s of times lower contention and is known in advance.

Broadband is usually always on. Mobile is purely connect on demand.

Broadband speed at peak times is limited by the designed in contention. There is NO lower limit to Mobile speed, nor assurance it will connect at all.

Each mobile mast supports a tiny number of users yet uses massively more power per user.

More mobile capacity can only be sensibly added by making cells much smaller. The 5G needs massive spectrum, typically LOS, to be any faster than 3G or 4G. Like in an open plan office, cafe, auditorium, racetrack or sports arena. Regular every-day mobile is never going to be much better unless every sixth street lamp is a base station. No incentive as it makes Mobile operators no extra money to increase mast density (capacity and speed).

See Shannon.

This is ancient but still true. Even FIXED wireless is better, on average and at minimum than mobile as it can have a fixed known worst contention, be always on and have a known minimum speed.

http://www.radioway.info/comparewireless/

It's 2020 and a rogue ICMPv6 network packet can pwn your Microsoft Windows machine

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: A new bug in 2020 ...?

I suspect loads of cheap Indian Programmers are simply underpaid. The only two Indian programmers I know are brilliant.

Mage Silver badge

Re: a XP box the internet … before it became infected … late 90's / early 00's

XP didn't even exist then.

"24th August 2001, and broadly released for retail sale on 25th October 2001."

Few people had it before 2002. I held off till April 2002 and even then it was only workstations, because the SERVER version didn't come out till 2003. Generally people only connected secured servers to the Internet, and even then might have used a firewall with port forwarding.

Windows 2000? Clue in the name. Late 1990s was only NT3.51 and NT4.0

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Mage Silver badge
Flame

To be fair, Microsoft Access does have its uses.

No, it doesn't. It's rubbish compared to MS's own free MSDE based on SQL.

SQLite is better.

Access should have been buried about 15 years ago.

Five Eyes nations plus Japan, India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

so they offer access to encrypted messages and content

Periodically we get this daft PR.

Likely within a year all the criminals and unfriendly nation states would know the "backdoor keys".

So a gift to designers not controlled by the Five-Eyes.

Apple's T2 custom secure boot chip is not only insecure, it cannot be fixed without replacing the silicon

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Surprised?

The main reason to buy a Mac is to run Mac OS.

Heads up: From 2022, all new top-end Arm Cortex-A CPU cores for phones, slabtops will be 64-bit-only, snub 32-bit

Mage Silver badge

Re: Presumably also less power usage ...

And how do you run the older programs that no-one is going to recompile? Maybe the author is dead.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

No 32 bit?

Stupid.

Unless you are Apple.

Burning down the house! Consumer champ Which? probes smart plugs to find a bunch of insecure fire-risk tat

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: top tip

Never put address or car reg.

If anything a tag asking they are given to police / garda etc with a code number. NOT your phone number. The code number helps convince the authorities that they are your keys.

Media is full of stupid advice.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Not just smart plugs!

The biggest cause of accidental domestic fires outside the kitchen might now be chargers for phones, laptops and tablets. Next is other power supplies.

The small SMPSU are too small and badly made compared to the old heavy transformer based units.

Also they often don't meet RFI standards, too much radio interference that can even affect DSL broadband.

Unplug them when not in use. Don't replace wall sockets with models that have built in USB chargers.

Amazon even supplies their own branded US pinned chargers for years to European customers with some products, which is illegal.

FYI: If you're running HP Device Manager, anyone on your network can get admin on your server via backdoor

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: I'll give them 1 out of 10

Or letmein, the default on Sage Line 50 that people rarely changed.

How hard is to have a 1st use screen where it explains about the address book kept in the safe that's used for passwords and prompts for a new password and then run a cracking tool rather than just count the number and types of characters?

Oh, and keep an off site copy securely too.

One company I know used a spreadsheet saved in Office 365 for ALL the company passwords!

Paper is more secure and can be more easily secured.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

One solution

Don't install HP drivers or software? I'm wary after the driver that LATER disabled working 3rd party toner cartridges.

I remember when HP was really good. I think sometime before they bought Compaq and realised how much money ink could make. And they did real test gear in those days too.

What does this HP Device Manager actually do?

It's 2020 so not only is your mouse config tool a Node.JS Electron app, it's also pwnable by an evil webpage

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: secure cross-platform JavaScript desktop apps.

Oxymoron.

Real production applications of any kind for local execution should not be written in javascript, or indeed anything else really intended to help the functionality of a website. They should use a proper programming language, the minimum being the kind compiled to an intermediate code.

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Absolute Fail

1) A scripting language when we have had real ones for 40 years.

2) A web server other than a proper one to actually serve web pages on the Internet or Intranet.

They should be banned from distributing software.

This is crazy on so many levels.

You also don't need lured. I use uMatrix because companies such as CNN and the BBC have served adverts with Malware. Google doesn't seem to really care.

Adverts need to be an image served from the main page's domain with simply an ordinary clickable link. Or links. A client side pure HTML image map is OK.

Also web sites using 3rd party code loaded a page load rather than having their own local checked copy is a privacy and security fail.

BUT A STUPID DESKTOP APPLICATION!!!!!!

Microsoft? More like: My software goes off... Azure AD, Outlook, Office.com, Teams, Authenticator, etc block unlucky folks from logging in

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: if only the internet was a distributed network

It's the plot of "No Silver Lining". The world is mostly using half a dozen big service providers. Things like edge routers, DNS and Web Services are similar. Patches are released by separate groups, rushed out on a Friday night. One is for Edge Routers and one set for Web Services.

Mobile Billing, ATMs, POS, electronic payments etc and even some SCADA are outsourced to the Cloud. So no Mobile calls or data, because it can't check your credit. No sales in the shops, no cash dispensing, some power, water and gas systems go down in some countries, no online wholesale ordering.

Lasts a week.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: alternative system set up for each of our 365 systems

That's nonsense.

It ultimately depends on MS Office 365.

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Opposite will happen

Dual Boot?

I did that from 1998 to early 2017. Then abandoned NT/Windows entirely apart from rarely spun up VMs (which are stored on an external USB HDD kept in a drawer).

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Am I the only one?

Wacom tablets, Creative USB external audio boxes and Brother printers/MFC actually install better on Linux than Win 10. Win10 can install the wrong drivers and also disable drivers on an update.

The driver issue used to be a problem. Not so much now.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

Indeed, IF.

I think it's bonkers dreaming. Win10 may indeed become less important to MS, but replacing the NT Kernel with the Linux Kernel would cost a lot in development and make no extra revenue.

Microsoft claims to love open source – this alleged leak of Windows XP code is probably not what it had in mind, tho

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Someone unaffiliated with ReactOS should...

Office 2003 seems to work fine under WINE, which is handier than a VM. Office XP/2002 mysteriously is almost impossible to install on WINE.

4G of RAM? The NT4.0 Enterprise could use more RAM than XP, which was 4G max, and either 2G or 2.5 G for an application depending on BOOT.INI settings. MS disabled PAE.

Then Intel made the Atom, deliberately crippled to 2G of external RAM, so even some win 10 systems were shipped with 32 bit Win10 on 64 bit Atoms.

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Re: @Novex - Exactly

The MS tool to image an XP OS (non-EFI) as a file for a VM on Win10 makes a file that works fine on the stock Linux VM, which seems like a similar application. Worked to image my 2002 to 2016 laptop and run it in the Linux VM. Actually works on an external USB HDD, which is handy.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: How to destroy your competitors

React OS?

They can't look at it, but they can have a separate team look at it and draw up specs for what an API should do?

Microsoft sprinkles a little Skype Meet Now integration on Windows 10 for Insiders

Mage Silver badge

Re: And for my next trick ...

Viber works on everything. Syncs tablets or Windows & Linux desktops to iOS or Android phones.

Not owned by Facebook.

Does video (inc multiway but only 1:1 on Linux), audio, phone out, file transfer, groups and text chat. Simple to install and use on tablets, desktop/laptop as long as you install on your phone first.

Same people that just sold Overdrive and own Kobo, Japan's Rakuten.

Skype became rubbish long before Facebook bought WhatsApp.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

the really really really big thing that killed Skype

Was that it got broken by MS:

Netbooks suddenly going to near 100% CPU, that had worked when eBay owned it.

Migration of login to MS Passport

Removal of features.

Dumbing down of text chat.

Death of Linux Version.

Some people even moved to QQ.

It was dying long before Whatsapp was popular.

It's the year of Linux on the... ThinkPad as Lenovo extends out-of-the-box Ubuntu support to nearly 30 machines

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

Windows licences, after all, represent a not-insignificant chunk of any PC's retail price.

Citation?

Frames per second? Windows Terminal brings back text animation with the VT100 blink

Mage Silver badge
Coat

VT100?

I was installing VT100 emulators on Windows (both kinds) in the 1990s for companies that replaced VT100s with PCs but also still had the minicomputer or Unix box.

I don't think this is especially clever or newsworthy because I've never seen an OS/2 or DOS or Windows Console program that used VT100.

Actual Terminal Programs for Windows that support VT100 must be 30 years old. Or 27 years old for NT aka real Windows.

It's powered by a mega-corp AI, it has a Liquid Mode, but it's not a T-1000. It's Adobe's PDF auto-reflow for mobile

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

RE: Ideal to proof read before printing

Not if it's reflowing on a small screen.

The ENTIRE point of PDF is to proof for Printing. Or Print. You need a big screen.

We have two superior techs to read documents on small screens: The epub based ebook (a Kindle AZW/KF8 format is basically the same) or HTML.

No-one needs this and it won't work for many existing PDFs. It will encourage idiots to use PDFs when they ought to produce ebooks (PDFs can be books in electronic form, they are NOT eBooks) or HTML. The only sensible use cases for PDFs are to proof something for print (so it CAN NOT be reflowed!) or to distribute for print or as a wrapper for a scanned multipage document, superior to multipage TIF, that can optionally have OCR for search. PDF forms are a stupid evil invention.

UK govt urged to bolt tough legal protections onto Arm and protect jobs – or simply veto Nvidia's £31bn acquisition

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: Sit!

That ship already sailed. It was sold to Softbank.

Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

How close a Clone is Edge?

Does Edge do the Chrome stupidity of automatically adding www or m and automatically changing even clicked links to https, because yesterday the top level of the site you were testing DID support HTTPS, but for various reasons it doesn't now and you really really want to load the http:// version?

Also a wildcard *.<mydomain>.<tld> isn't a true subdomain wildcard as https://www.<myssubdomain>.<mydomain>.<tld> will fail. Though Chrome is sure that's what you mean by http://<myssubdomain>.<mydomain>.<tld>

You can fix it with a rewrite rule AND totally clearing Chrome's Cache. Sometimes.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: At least ... IE

Because IE is dead. MS even killed IE8, so any OS using it for Windows or MS Update, say reinstalled X-Ray machine, can no longer connect to MS Servers. Fails on HTTPS and FTP. VMware ends IE11 support next year. MS has even killed their own Edge, and is using the guts of Chrome (Chromium?) in it now.

I was trying to get updates and converters for Office 2003 and Office 2007. MS's site search is now useless for that, you have to search cnet instead. MS wants to rent you Office 365. Not office as you know it. But then The Ribbon (Office 2007 and later?) isn't Office as you know it. Easier to find the third party "Recreate the Traditional Menus" plugin than any MS service pack or plugin for real versions of Office (i.e. ones that came on CD and didn't need the Internet, even the phone activation still works, though you may need to search the Internet to find the phone numbers).

1-800-930-031 to activate all MS Products in Ireland. No quiz any more on why you are reinstalling, fully automated.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

A web browser based on Chrome by MS

Sounds like Google has won?

I believe MS has scrapped IE and their previous in house Edge on Windows for an Edge Branded Chromium.

Google has what percentage on each platform and what with Chrome and what % of what's left is based on Chromium?

I had to switch to Brave on Android, because Mozilla made Firefox nearly unusable. I've been using firefox derived Waterfox so as to have Classic Theme Restorer. I wonder how long that will last before I have to use Chromium.

So more about the total failure of IE and Firefox vs Google than Windows vs Linux. Firefox was a market leader and strangled themselves with copying Google.

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Ha!

I HAVE a Spectrum Analyser.

I reported the new TV next door to the Regulator (Comreg). It took them over a year to do anything.

Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid mechanical keyboard: Weird, powerful, comfortable ... and did we mention weird?

Mage Silver badge

Re: how is a non-standard layout in any way good?

I have CapsLock as Compose. The only sensible use. Double Shift is Caps Lock for silly forms wanting all caps. A hang over from typewriters.

I don't want a keyboard without the |\ key beside Z, or at least near it.

The one key less US keyboards are nearly as bad as the US Date formats.

It seems about x10 over priced. I got a nice Microsoft keyboard and mouse (wireless sharing a USB dongle) for a 1/10th of that that uses Alkaline cells. I also have a small USB Keysonic with the ¬ key beside the 1 moved beside Alt (which is also AltGr using the Func key) and the |\ key from beside Z between that and the space bar. About 10.5 x 22 cm and has the four cursor keys as PgUp, PgDn, Home and End via the Func key, which also maps F9 and F10 to the seldom used F11 and F12. It's excellent and was under €20.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: No cursor keys

Surely you mean

E

S D

X

Ports in a storm: The Matebook 14 won't set your world on fire, but it's still a half-decent laptop

Mage Silver badge

Re: USB-C for power

Also limits the power to 100W. A decently anchored coax connector is better. They are also replaceable on the laptop or cable, but I doubt USB-C is.

It's fashion, it can't be saving money.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Honor MagicBook Pro ... yet comes with a much larger display.

The MagicBook Pro is an inferior display. PDFs of A4 are marginal on 1080, the 1440 is far better.

Comparing inches/Cm without considering aspect ratio and actual number of pixels and actual DPI is meaningless.

However it does seems physically a little challenging if you don't have it close and have suitable reading glasses.

I'd rather have about 15" for a 3:2 screen.

I have a late 2016 Lenovo 14" 1920 x 1080 screen. My 2002 1600 x 1200 screen ( a bit over 15") was better.

So called Retina screens are no better for PDFs or A4 unless they are larger. Simply having twice as sharp pixels isn't useful if you can only see the same amount of document as a 1080 screen.

1200 is a minimum vertically, but you need more than 1200 or even more than 1440 if the pixels are more than 133 dpi.

Elecrow CrowPi2: Neat way to get your boffins-to-be hooked on Linux from an early age and tinkering in no time

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Nice, but?

BT rather than reliable USB for keyboard and mouse is a mistake?

I've never ever had reliable BT typing on anything, Hugely less stable than proprietary Wireless needing a small USB dongle.

Thunderbird implements PGP crypto feature requested 21 years ago

Mage Silver badge
Pint

Re: About time..

I moved from Firefox to Waterfox simply because of GUI stupidity. They are slowly breaking the Thunderbird GUI. I may try Evolution. I had to get a plugin for export as that vanished ages ago.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Independent key verification

Initial key distribution really needs a separate channel and no identification of what the message is for, but known identity of both parties.

It's been the the problem of every system ever. The Asymmetric system using public and private keys is a part solution.