* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Intel end-of-lifing BIOS and driver downloads for dusty hardware

Mage Silver badge

Servers & DRM too

I don't know? "Plays for Sure".

Do Tesco Hudl Tablets still brick when reset?

I think one model of Amazon Kindle on a particular FW "bricks" if you Factory Reset it, maybe DX Graphic.

Mage Silver badge

Re: I am still running my steam engine

But can I run Daggerfall on it?

Or King's Quest 1

Or Megatraveller

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: how much demand is there for 20 year old?

Wrong question.

Mage Silver badge

Removal of stuff costing little

And also that might make money

Geocities?

The website for epub specs erased when that crowd merged to the Web lot.

Some bosses just like clean desks and no dusty files in the cabinets.

The BBC used to destroy 16mm film and "save" £85 per episode recording over tapes when better practice and a fraction of production cost would be new tapes for each recording.

Probably a decision made by a manager or accountant that has never had to unexpectedly refurbish, restore, repair or commission old gear.

This will cost more in operator time than than leaving it alone and the risk that something important is removed.

Rules of IT:

Make backups

Make Archival copies that are not overwritten

Never delete archives.

Never EVER delete production files, ever, unless you have an entire system backed up, verified the backup restores on another box and someone is checking what you are doing.

rm is not your friend

rm -rf / is the devil's tool. Especially with --no-preserve-root

'Literally a paperweight': Bose users fume at firmware update that 'doesn't fix issues'

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: How many decent products and companies....

Was Bose, Beats, Sonos etc ever other than hyped style & price & size more important than function.

Also €250 for Apple earbuds that you can't change the battery on and are less adaptable than €6 wired earbuds for your ears. I'll stick with a phone that has a 3.5mm socket and my €12 earbuds + mic.

I solved TV sound issue (both TVs have like laptop speakers) by using a Chinese HDMI/Optical/RCA Digital to 5.1 analogue adaptor, with also a stereo down mix. Feeds regular dumb amps and speakers.

If it's not cloud, GTFO: Sage flogs payments business to US firm Elavon for £230m

Mage Silver badge

Re: doesn't mean the business will start operating out of the US

It's not about operating out of the US, but lack of regulation and oversight of US companies in the US, control, privacy etc. Safe Harbor has proved to be an illusion.

Everyday big US companies ignore the laws outside of the USA.

Just because a US company already have both Irish and British subsidiaries that are authorised merchant services providers by the relevant authority in each country shouldn't mean automatic approval.

Maybe ALL US ownership of companies processing EU data needs looked at. Would the USA allow foreign citizens to own and run even a TV station?

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Sage is flogging its payments arm to US firm

Lots of Irish retailers use Sage Pay. Ireland isn't leaving the EU.

Has this got regulator approval, and if so why?

GDPR, Safe harbor, etc etc.

Physicists are rather giddy after creating a rare type of laser using laughing gas

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Laughing gas

"These molecules are excited by the laser’s energy and react by vibrating and rotating."

So that's why it's called Laughing Gas.

Also I thought we had the MASER before the LASER. Isn't this band more like microwave than infrared? Though it's too early in the morning for figures and I can't remember what frequency a MASER could do. Most MASER applications are now done by GaAs FETs, but some are still used.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Brilliant

As per title. Really enjoyed that.

Though I'd not tell the world if:

1) I'd installed such a system.

2) I found I had the key.

Maybe though it's all made up. Why would Dabsy install such a system?

Magic Leap rattles money tin, assigns patents to a megabank, sues another ex-staffer... But fear not, all's fine

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: they should have come clean earlier

Some sums on an envelope would have suggested that it would need far more GPU and CPU than is available outside of a supercomputer lab. The response time to head and eye movement was known, the field of view and resolution needed was known. What they were promising wasn't possible and probably still isn't and won't be for a long time for even a well off business, never mind the public. Ten high end gaming rigs wouldn't be enough. You need very rapid head and eye tracking to avoid sickening lag.

It didn't help that all their "demos" have been essentially mockups so far.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: We have a system which massively rewards utter bullsh't.

One part is the USPTO. They assume if the patent is invalid someone will fight it in court. So by default they award. They get more income and save money by not doing proper due diligence.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: It really is interesting

Maybe the plan all along was to be patent trolls.

Icahn smell money! Corporate raider grabs $1.2bn of HP stock to push for Xerox merger

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Dinosaurs of a digital age

I've saved nearly €700 in paper and toner "printing" to ebook. Read, annotate and copy back notes to laptop from an Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo. Sony has a 13" + size one for PDFs called Electronic paper.

The eink is a niche. Inherently useless for colour (possible but about x6 dimmer) or video (massive ghosting and lag), but viable for paperback book sized text & B&W images. Reformatted web sites via Wordprocessor & Calibre are OK.

We just use the Laser printer for colour and scanning. Ink jet is too expensive and unreliable, we gave them up once everyone we knew had laptops and smartphones (+ Viber) to see the family snaps.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

activist investor

I keep mentioning this on Carl Icahn stories:

"That word doesn't mean what you think it means"

The correct descriptions are indeed Corporate Raider, Vulture Capitalist, Speculator... Maybe even Serial Asset stripper. Is there ANYONE that's an Activist Investor? You know, like Greenpeace buying into a Whaling Company to get them to make money catching plastic waste from the ocean and recycling it. I know a poor example. Maybe someone can think of one.

Complete with keyboard and actual, literal, 'physical' escape key: Apple emits new 16" $2.4k+ MacBook Pro

Mage Silver badge

Re: "The £2,399 portable"

13" is only a netbook. You need at least 15" for Widescreen, or 17" to have similar height to a 15" 4:3 laptop

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Hmm.

Every computer I've used since 1979 had a good keyboard. Except the Apple II, which was the last I personally owned, but I had the misfortune to fix the "screen on half a ball models" for some people.

Every laptop I've ever had, first about 1998, has had an Escape key. HP, Dell, Lenovo full laptops, and various netbooks.

Every computer I've had since 1992 was great to type on. I also use a real mouse.

It seems extremely expensive.

I've had it with these motherflipping eggs on this motherflipping train

Mage Silver badge

Re: Can't drink a whisky in the shower?

Not even from the bottle?

Mage Silver badge
Pint

Re: Surströmming for lunch

Hmm... I read the Wikipedia article.

So like Marmite in one respect.

"Some people do not care for surströmming.[12] It is a food which is subject to strong passions."

Surreal. Maybe you need to be Swedish.

Icon, because apparently may be needed.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

while eating a banana

Them or yourself eating it?

Or both?

Or a shared one at opposite ends.

Facebook iOS app silently turns on your phone camera. Ah, relax – it's just a bug, lol!?

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Now's the time to remove those little 'f' buttons on every page

The default example FB code on FB for a FB icon is terrifically stalky javascript and maybe illegal in the EU. However some websites simply put the icon image and a link, no javascript.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Simple answer

Ditch it.

1) Anyone with Facebook needs email to register, so email family and friends.

2) Corporate support? Get your own website.

3) Advertising? Stop funding this immoral US Mega corp. They lie about responses achieved, they've admitted it. Also targeting may break religious, gender, income, race/ethnic discrimination laws in many countries.

Google brings its secret health data stockpiling systems to the US

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: Wow

And they were allowed to buy Fitbit.

Without any apparent irony, Google marks Chrome's 'small' role in web ecosystem

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Searches

Google Search getting increasingly poor as they are ignoring -terms, personalising even if not logged in, guessing your location, moving up people that advertise with them or use their analytics etc. Or assuming you want a bookmark service.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: Slow web sites

No, it's all the evil 3rd party scripts, cookies, monitoring etc. Much by Google or inspired by Google.

Installing and using uMatrix helps.

No idea why 3rd party cookies are not disabled by default. I've never found disabling 100% breaks anything and aren't they illegal in Europe?

Also evil Google CAPTCHA systems that delay access to sites and are simply Google being a parasite on training data sets. SHAME on web sites installing those!

Microsoft embraces California data privacy law – don't expect Google to follow suit

Mage Silver badge

Re: crash detector and dialogue box so folk could decide

They used to, over 17 years ago. Did they stop? I now only use Win10 on an x86 10" tablet to read PDFs.

Mage Silver badge

Service Providers?

Service Providers can sell your data under this law? Am I mistaken?

No-one, EVER, should be allowed to pass on personal data or usage without a warrant. Like for a search of a building. Selling on information gathered should simply be illegal no matter how it's gathered or the kind of company.

Still it's a start. Google, Facebook and cronies are despicable parasites.

Teachers: Make your pupils' parents buy them an iPad to use at school. Oh and did you pack sunglasses for the Apple-funded jolly?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Lies

If it's just about textbook weight, why not ANY 10" or larger laptop or tablet, iOS, Mac OS, Chromebook, Microsoft, Android or Linux.

Why would decent Irish Language text books be ONLY on the iPad? Which if true is a scandal too, a much bigger one.

I know one Limerick school that does this. It's wrong headed. You can't object, because then you'd not get in.

Note in most Irish Schools the parents have to buy the books. There is a racket in primary school where many textbooks are also combined workbooks that can't be reused.

The ones that aren't are changed regularly.

Mage Silver badge

Which Schools?

I know one of the schools.

If it's just about text book weight, why not ANY 10" or larger laptop or tablet, iOS, Mac OS, Chromebook, Microsoft, Android or Linux.

Why would decent Irish Language text books be ONLY on the iPad?

If the text books are only on the iPad that's a scandal too, a much bigger one.

Mage Silver badge

Chrome books

The Google Chromebook is in some ways worse than iPads or iMacs.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Lies

What Apple and the Limerick Educators are saying doesn't match reality.

There are BETTER printed Irish resources and if you MUST use a screen, a laptop is better and cheaper than the walled Garden iPad.

No screen at all is proven to be best.

70% markup and a walled garden designed purely for browsing content.

It smells of either idiocy or corruption.

Other thoughts:

1) They shouldn't be locked to Apple,

2) They don't need screens except in very few subjects.

3) It's proven to be poorer than education without screens,

4) Anything cloud based should be illegal.

5) The ease of use is a lie. It's just inflexible.

If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is: Nobody can decrypt the Dharma ransomware

Mage Silver badge

Re: Can someone explain.....

There is also time delayed encryption.

The data is encrypted and unlocked on the fly, then not, so the recent backup can be encrypted.

But as others point out most small companies and some big ones regard backups as an avoidable hassle of time and money.

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

Mage Silver badge

Re: The EU is planning to create a new European Space Agency

Because, actually the ESA isn't an EU organisation. Not all EU countries are in the ESA, though the the EU as a whole contributes. Also there are three (I think) non-EU countries in the ESA.

It's explained accurately in this otherwise fictional account of Aliens visiting earth. "The Solar Alliance" by Ray McCarthy. The Aliens quickly figure out that the UN is mostly a talking shop. The ESA and EU take them longer to understand. A new Earth agency is setup by the countries with space launch facilities, or willing to make a major commitment, but who is REALLY running the Solar Alliance, with its HQ in Shannon Ireland, an Israeli Finance director and an ex KGB/SVR Russian in charge of Security?

Mage Silver badge

Re: if Russians can afford to run their own GNSS system

Possibly they can't afford it. The reason to have it would be both political and military.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: It's Phil's fault!

Ah, that's why the EU is abolishing the twice a year clock changing!

Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: Alistair in a mini-skirt.

maybe lost in translation and it's a kilt from when he was about 10. There is quite an overlap of fabric?

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Your list

Coca Cola bought Costa. A match made in heaven.

Why aren't Trading Standards after McD in UK. They claim to serve meals and happy meals.

Chrome OS: Yo dawg, I heard you like desktops so we put a workspace in your workspace

Mage Silver badge

Re: The necessary OS support goes back as far as NT

Certainly I installed free MICROSOFT sw for it on NT4.0, though possibly it was after Win2K was released. No idea when MS released it.

I did have Concurrent CP/M in 1992.

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Virtual desktops have been available ... Win 10

Available to install on Windows as long ago as NT4.0, just not promoted by MS.

UNIX/Linux has ALWAYS theoretically had multiple desktops.

Explain again why I'd want the pseudo laptop / Cloud Terminal spyware from Google rather than Windows, MacOS or Linux?

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

Mage Silver badge
Devil

It's a Cruise control!

Calling it Self Driving or Auto Pilot is a marketing gimmick. Some countries already insist it's only marketed and described as a cruise control.

Can we make it a criminal offence to hype AI. Or maybe to use AI at all in the description of a product. AI has become a meaningless marketing term too.

Directors should be personally liable. A fine on a company is no deterrent.

Comcast-owned Brit telco Sky to hire 1,000 new staffers, half of them engineers

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

employs 3,500 engineers to service

No, they don't.

Most are not even technicians.

They know how to drill holes, put plugs on coax, align the dish and swap parts.

Google forks out $2.1bn for Fitbit – and promises not to exploit all that delicious health data to sling ads (honest)

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: company making WiFi connected pacemakers

Does someone make such a crazy product? Mind you I couldn't believe the stupidity of the insulin pumps.

Obv. an actual heart monitor is a different thing to a pacemaker.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Health data is the missing piece for Google

No, they have already done dodgy deals with UK Health trusts.

However no way should anyone anywhere approve this. This serves three purposes:

1) Yet another buy in instead of development. Android was bought in and very successful for phones and tablets. Garbage on TVs and a disaster on wearables. Android & Chrome & ChromeOS replace the street view war-driving.

2) Gather even more personal data.

3) Compete with Apple in Apple's last niche, which having got off to a poor start the Apple Watch is inexplicably doing well.

Thus Google buying Fitbit was inevitable given failure of Android wearables/watch and growth of Apple smart watch. Also the Apple Watch has been adding health features.

Euro competition chief mulls forcing tech giants to prove their actions aren't harming market

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Proving the negative - the non existence of anything - is impossible

Not always.

A positive DNA match with the suspect can even be someone the suspect doesn't know, a false positive.

A negative DNA match exonerates the suspect*.

DNA testing at crime scenes is a big advance. But not as reliable as fingerprints. It's not a 100% detailed test. OTH, identical twins don't actually have a 100% match, but a better match than what is normally regarded as positive at a crime scene. Yet amazingly they DO have different fingerprints because those will develop differently even with a perfect clone or identical twins.

[* though they need to sample the DNA of the suspect widely if the person is a chimera, that is their own twin, then they have two sets of DNA! However a negative on both sets is conclusive.]

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: onus of proof.

It's not the same scenario as individuals charged under a criminal justice system, nor indeed civil law, where more often you do have to prove you didn't do wrong. It's a completely different issue especially as many big international companies are more powerful than countries and think laws don't apply to them at all.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_corporate_acquisitions_and_mergers

These lists are incomplete.

Victorian Antony Trollope saw a lot of this coming: "The Way We Live Now".

c.f. Dickens and "Little Dorrit".

Or John Brunner and "Shockwave Rider", far better than over hyped "Future Shock".

Maybe even Roland Perry "Program for a Puppet".

Which Corp is most like House Harkonnen?

Microsoft welcomes ancient Project app to the 365 family, meaning bleak future for on-prem

Mage Silver badge

Re: legacy systems that only run in Windows

Often those run better on WINE or an XP virtual machine (both on Linux) than on Windows 10 64 bit.

Some newer Linux distros need a poke to get the WINE 32 bit support installed, which IMO is more important than 64 bit for "legacy windows" applications with no Linux replacement that may never have an upgrade released.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: How much?

Smaller projects only need a spreadsheet and one manager that spends a few minutes a day or even per week updating it.

I used to give courses in MS Project and was appalled how many people were sent on the course with zero training in project management, or indeed in anything other than doing work set by a supervisor. Also it's better suited to NON-Software projects. Big ones.

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: Not sure when the world got duped into this rental-only model

Long before PCs and minicomputers. Not just HW & SW, but um, buildings and cars too.

Sometimes leasing or rental makes sense. Not with most computer HW & SW for most businesses.Locks the small to medium into dependency on the Cloud Provider and ISP.

Risks the world infrastructure because if one retail chain, business or wholesale goes down it's no big deal. Even if the "Cloud" is 1000x more reliable (it's often less than decent on premises), then when it goes down it's an apocalypse.

Fortunately the tipping point of dependence has not yet been reached.

Set slightly in the future:

https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Lining-Celtic-Otherworld-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y26M8Z6

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/716453

Yes, it's got Fairies and Otherworlds, but I think the warnings about "The Cloud" are real.

During the minicomputer and PC era we went forward. Digital Equipment Corp developed cheap two PC clustering that only need a pair of ordinary servers, SCSI cards with two external ports, four external SCSI bus repeater/isolators for when a PC/SCSI card failed and two external racks of SCSI drives, mirrored, as a minimum. Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition. Rather cheaper than a 1991 VAX cluster.

Outsourcing to the cloud and trusting the big USA mega corps is a backward step since that high point of development of on premises gear. Later you could use fibre and put the shelves, UPSes and servers in two separate sites.

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

It is also possible for team members to edit tasks simultaneously.

Madness. Can they be trusted to be realistic?

Say after me. MS Project or any other Project management software does not manage projects.

People manage projects. Project management software allows the team leaders or project manager to update the reporting based on realistic analysis of the progress and snags that have occurred.

Useful for a large building project like a hospital or school or new shopping mall, maybe a housing estate.

Not so good for a small team of programmers, or one single house build where the Project management software overhead is too high and a spreadsheet updated by one person might be better.

Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'

Mage Silver badge

Re: Power required

The conclusion was that even for slow charging, widespread use of EV needs a massive increase in power generation and in Grid infrastructure.

Swapping battery packs is a better solution as fast charging needs x10 current, with potential issues supplying the charging stations, heavier wiring and even more peak demand infrastructure.

Hydrogen isn't a solution. Perhaps making LPG using waste carbon and solar or nuclear power is a better idea? Oddly LPG can be transported with less energy loss than electricity. Also existing petrol vehicles have been modified to use LPG since 1970s. Safer than EV batteries and hydrogen.

EV does make sense for stop-start and single person commute in cities / urban. LPG makes more sense for trucks, buses, rural cars, BUT only assuming synthetic production from renewable sources and maybe hybrid Fusion/Fission (the neutrons from Fusion allow Fission reactor waste to generate electricity and make the waste a lot safer). The carbon in synthetic LPG has to come from waste carbon.

UK ads watchdog slaps Amazon for UX dark arts after folk bought Prime subs they didn't want

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Prime, KDP Select, Kindle Unlimited, Subscriptions

Prime, KDP Select, Kindle Unlimited, Subscriptions are all evil when it's a retailer.

They also cheat content providers of Royalties.

Subscriptions result in consumers paying MORE than buying what you want when you want. A tax on the poorer people subsidising big consumers.

Amazon is building monopolies. It needs broken up and regulated. So does Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Sadly ASA and the Irish equivalent are not real regulators. Unfortunately real ones like Ofcom and Comreg ended up being "Captured" by Mobile Operators and previous incumbents.

Certain Data and Financial regulators have been poor. However USA is much worse (FCC, ICANN, Opioids etc).