* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Escape from the Zuckerborg: WhatsApp founder legs it

Mage Silver badge

Re: Signal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

Sounds good and is on the Package Manager on Linux Mint as well as Android Playstore.

The difficulty is getting people to move. They are jaded from Skype -> QQ Messenger ->WhatsApp -> Viber etc (not always that order). Even older stuff too before Skype.

Mage Silver badge

Re: The way I read this

Facebook got *all* the the contacts on any phone with Whatsapp when they bought it. So privacy ship long gone.

Mage Silver badge

Re: What platform next?

"advise to avoid Skype as well"

Apart from the fact it's now practically broken.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: What platform next?

"- Signal

- Telegram

- Threema "

->

How does Rakuten owned Viber compare (same folk in Japan that own Canadian Kobo)? It seems to sell "Stickers"

Grab your lamp, you've pulled: Brits punt life-saving gravity-powered light

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Gravity?

Yes, Gravity Powered is *like* perpetual motion. It's human powered. No doubt a weight is cheaper than a spring. Or just having a rechargeable cell.

There is a pendulum that looks like it's gravity powered, or a perpetual motion machine. It's driven by the Earth's rotation. I presume a LOT of BIG ones would slow down the rotation.

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

Thermodynamics. No free lunch.

There is no reason why an old weight or spring driven mechanism can't be used to drive an LED. Though please don't dismember record player or mecanno motors to make one. Or other than mass produced clocks/music boxes.

I think some music boxes (see eBay for new cheap mechanisms) could provide enough LED to read for a few minutes?

Or what about arm and leg "irons" that crank a spring with a clutch that drives motor to charge your phone?

US citizen sues France over France-dot-com brouhaha

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: Vikings

Curiously though, the Continental Celts did about 500 to 1000 years earlier. The Vikings didn't.

Firefox to feature sponsored content as of next week

Mage Silver badge

Re: History shows that no one will pay for a Web browser

Since MS included one free in the OS.

Mage Silver badge

Daft

"add sponsored links to its browser in January 2018"

I said this was daft then.

Pocket is pointless and potentially invasive spyware (wanted pages saved on 3rd party server instead of users saving them).

!!!

!!!

As I've said frequently, they have lost the plot totally. On GUI, research, customisation, plug-ins etc. Still using Firefox 52ESR on desktop. The Mobile version is poo, though works. Very bad phone GUI though better than it was.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

Mage Silver badge

started drafting an awesome news tip for The Register on Tuesday morning

XP, without search update toys, had a decent search that worked by date and/or file type. You didn't need to have the stupid animated dog or Windows Indexing for it to be quite quick.

Mage Silver badge

Re: I only want to know one thing

"How do I turn it all off."

Use the Start Menu to end it. Select Shut Down.

Then go to BIOS at next power on and make sure USB boot enabled, and possibly UEFI only.

Then install Windows 7 or Linux Mint with Mate Desktop and TraditionalOK theme (or maybe "Hackintosh" if outside USA jurisdiction and you've bought a retail OS X).

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: phone lines cables are made of copper

Should be. But BT decided to save money. I think Milton Keynes might be all aluminium. The connections are a big issue.

At least they kept plastic insulation and didn't go back to paper.

Mage Silver badge
FAIL

Re: but several million voluntary beta testers

That's not proper testing. A badly chosen group and a reliance on telemetry.

See Norman Nielsen Group articles.

Mage Silver badge

Re: "Keep clicking, Windows-lovers! It's bound to come along soon."

Yes! Absolutely! Can't! Upvote! Enough!

~

It also sounds Meh.

* Peer to Peer Windows Updates on LAN already existed.

* Voice dictation with a key press combo possible since at least 2002 on Windows.

* Who really wants Win 10s?

I bet it doesn't fix ANY of the things really needing fixed.

Incredible Euro space agency data leak... just as planned: 1.7bn stars in our galaxy mapped

Mage Silver badge

Re: Galactic Positioning System

Uses Pulsars. Even works within the Solar System.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/what-if-gps-stood-for-galactic-positioning-system

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17557581

That's no moon... er, that's an asteroid. And it'll be your next and final home, spacefarer

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Re: Life Aboard A Colony

It could take a long time to get even 2 LY away ( maybe hardly past Oort Cloud), perhaps 100 to 500 years. All that time you have comms, with increasing latency. You use only a fraction of your energy source/fuel/reaction mass to leave Solar system. Then hope within a 1000 years you reach somewhere habitable. You need stuff designed for long life and onboard factories, inc the bits that replicate all the bits including the bits that replicate the bits.

Food, water and air etc is more or less a solved problem. Having all the technology work for 100s to 1000s of years is harder and involves basically being able to manufacture everything from raw materials and recycled parts. The 3D printers only solve some issues.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Will our Descendants Feel the Same Way?

A lot of interesting SF has been written about Generation Ships, which are still the only known workable concept for Interstellar travel.

Technologically just about possible since nuclear subs were deployed.

PC recycler gets 15 months in the clink for whipping up 28,000 bootleg Windows 7, XP recovery discs

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Rebuy Windows

No, you could ring them. A free number, certainly in Ireland, that worked with a real human at 3am. The "agent" would ask for existing key, ask what you did and read you out a new key.

Yes, a key could be become invalid. No, you didn't have to pay a cent.

Time to ditch the front door key? Nest's new wireless smart lock is surprisingly convenient

Mage Silver badge

Secure

Nest & Yale think they can do this securely?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/25/hotel_room_key_security_flaw/

Mage Silver badge

7V

Does sound sort of nominal.

But a good pocket radio design even 50 years ago assumed end point of a 9V PP3 was about 5.6V. The endpoint of a cell is regarded as about 0.9, or 1V to 1.05V for decent life on an NiCd or NiMH, which are only 7.2V or 8.4V fully charged (6 cells vs 7 cells). An Alkaline PP3 with 6 cells is almost 10V when fresh with no load. Some use 6 x cylindrical cells like AAAA and some slightly higher capacity use 6 stacked rounded corner button cells. The Rechargeable are only button type if 7 cells, otherwise cylindrical or button. The "Carbon" layer PP3 are about 460mAH, due to layer construction, and are better than cylindrical Zinc Carbon or Zinc Chloride, though shorter shelf life than Alkaline PP3.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Time to ditch the front door key?

Not for anything that uses wireless only. I've frequently needed actual key & lock on car, yet battery was fine on fob & car. Also look at Rav4 and other car electronic locks.

Not for anything that connects to Internet.

Not for anything owned by Alphabet/Google.

Blighty stuffs itself in Galileo airlock and dares Europe to pull the lever

Mage Silver badge

Re: How?

It's only the datacentre stuff and military stuff etc. Ordinary civilian user access not affected, nor even ability to be involved in non-sensitive equipment supply. May did more than invoke Article 50. UK referendum purely was an in/out question. It was left up to the Government to decide how. May seems to have implemented a harsher Article 50 letter than needed and seems to have invoked it before doing any research. There was no time limit even implied in Referendum on when to leave EU, nor how. No-one explicitly voted for what T. May and her cabinet are doing / proposing in terms of N.I., GFA, ECHR, ECJ, customs union, single market, Euratom etc.

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Re: more than capable of building satellites

Well a private company in Surrey is. But UK is only country in the world to have reached space and abandoned it.

Possibly the only country to develop viable nukes to point of reliable use and then abandon them to "rent" off USA. The Vanguard subs are the UK's, but who really controls the Trident Missiles supplied by USA?

The tech you're reading these words on – you have two Dundee uni boffins to thank for that

Mage Silver badge

Re: I was going to say "how do you know I'm reading this on TFT?"

Definitely window size of browser. Not sure if total screen resolution is reported, but the technology of screen is not at all reported by the browser. They didn't envisage eInk (no animation and really you want to refresh entire page, not part) or mechanical pins for touch/blind(VERY slow) when deciding what browsers report. Even alt text is often useless.

A few folks using OLED (smaller screens but TFT too). Hardly ANYONE actual real LEDs (OLED are not proper LEDs), some CRTs still. I had an orange plasma transportable "laptop" once. The tech of choice for robust. Colour Plasma never really caught on for PCs/Laptops. Not many people using DLP (insane tech) projectors for web.

Most are using colour LCD TFT. OLED also uses TFT for the same reasons!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Superb article!

Alistair used to work for actual printed magazines. The ones with writing between the ads rather than the few left with pictures of supposedly famous people.

Mage Silver badge

Re: RCA

RCA 1986, not 1976, sorry!

Mage Silver badge

TV

Baird didn't invent TV. He was an entrepreneur promoting an updated mechanical system proposed by Nipkow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gottlieb_Nipkow Electronic TV was proposed in 1906 and working versions developed by others, though Baird's nearly instant film to electronic transmission was used in satellites to have high resolution and low data rate. From the beginning the problem was how to make the camera target. The CRT already existed and was the obvious thing to use as part of a camera, not just the display.

Farnsworth didn't invent TV either. His system was technological dead end. The big problem was viable electronic camera. EMI/RCA collaboration based on Vladimir Kosma Zworykin's work started at Westinghouse in 1929.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_story_brewster.html

Mage Silver badge

Re: TFT patent?

They were not a large USA Corporation. Or Maybe German, Finnish or Asian.

Ironic that RCA was gone by 1976. The dregs bought by French Thomson. Now name may be owned by Nokia.

UK from 1850s to 1970s was brilliant at innovation. More rarely at comercialising. By 1960s most of the original UK Electronics had either been morphed to MOD contracts or run by bean counters with no vision. Acorn's ARM was really the only one that escaped the curse and only by giving up making, but licensing.

Thorn went downhill after Jules Thorn retired (and died not long after, he had a long reign).

Mullard was Philips by 1928. EMI (HMV etc) lost their way in 1970s. Ferranti, Plessey, GEC, Inmos, ICL, Ever Ready, Burndept, Vidor, Rank Radio (Bush / Murphy). Sinclair was a serial disaster, certainly a show man. Alan Sugar /Amstrad. The other UK companies in Telecoms & Computers.

Most Edison & RCA patents were bought in, intimidation, ignoring prior art, simply invalid etc. To and extent Bell Labs/AT&T (The UNIX land grab of work done by the Universities) Though all did innovate too.

The USPTO especially needs reformed.

Oh dear... Netizens think 'private' browsing really means totally private

Mage Silver badge

Re: only recommend items that you'd only buy again after considerable time

Really... perhaps that was sarcasm.

How many toilet seats, new taps, Tablets do I want?

Microsoft Lean's in: Slimmed-down Windows 10 OS option spotted

Mage Silver badge

Re: Windows NT was around 30Mb...

Which NT?

3.1 (first version and in 1993), 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 (Win2K), 5.1(XP), 5.3(Server 2003), 6.x (Vista and Windows 7 and others).

Maybe you mean NT4.0 Workstation x86 (there was Server, Enterprise Server and even the first 64bit for Alpha as well as an Embedded version. NT4.0 maybe supported maybe the most CPU types?).

Mage Silver badge

list of everything you've added to Windows since Windows 7

Or everything since Server 2003. Or maybe NT4 (drivers for things like USB don't count. There were actually preview NT4.0 USB drivers, but they killed SP7 and upgrades worried about impact on windows 2000 sales).

Though putting GDI into kernel was daft. NT3.51 with Explorer shell preview never crashed the way NT4.0 /Win2K/XP/Server did when a doggy print or graphics driver was added.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Why would they sell the OS users really want?

Certainly sooner rather than later you need the registry editor, if only to fix something broken by an MS update!

Reg writer Richard went to the cupboard, seeking a Windows Phone...

Mage Silver badge

" Linux on the Alcatel Idol 4S"

I got the Alcatel A3 XL reduced in Tesco to €99. It's back up to €149 inc Irish VAT. No contract needed and free to unlock from Tesco after 9 months.

Seems fine (after I replaced stock camera app with Open Camera). It's just 8MP, but higher counts often poorer in low light. I have my old 12M camera with real 4:1 zoom for slightly more serious photography.

Easy to swap SIM or micro SD card. Though a 6" screen it fits in hand and pockets.

Real headphone socket. FM Radio not quite as sensitive as my ancient Sony Ericsson.

Firefox works far better than on my tablet. First phone I've had where browser fast enough.

I can't see why people pay more for a Mobile than decent HD laptop or a decent 4K HDTV. Certainly x2 to x3 as much is bonkers.

I almost entirely use WiFi as I only use SMS or voice calls if not actually sat somewhere.

'Your computer has a virus' cold call con artists on the rise – Microsoft

Mage Silver badge

Re: Automated calls

I get those from UB/RBS. They may be real as it happens the same evening when we have visited the branch. I've complained and they claim they don't know. I hang up.

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Are they still doing this?

Got one last week. Too busy writing / editing.

Also do NOT say anything that can be interpreted as an affirmative in case of faked contracts / sales.

I tell them that all calls are recorded for training and security purposes and they hang up.

Yahoo! dismemberment! begins! as! Oath! offloads! Flickr!

Mage Silver badge

no longer have to sign up?

Maybe you are thinking of Pinterest which is impossible without a Pinterest account. Flickr is sort of accessible without a login.

May depend on your script blocking settings.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Serious lens people?

Serious Lens people do not rely on a 3rd person cloud that everyone thinks contains free to use images.

Signal app guru Moxie: Facebook is like Exxon. Everyone needs it, everyone despises it

Mage Silver badge

Everyone needs it

Really?

no-one needs it except Zuckerberg.

Windows 10 Spring Creators Update team explains the hold-up: You little BSOD!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Canary

I think it's a Norwegian one.

Mage Silver badge

Re: and it just works, but not on Win10

Win 10 upgrade to newer Win 10 on two machines: No sound card. Search Windows update, still nothing. Search windows.old folder and the driver there worked.

Linux 17.x to 18.x: Updated various netbooks, laptops deskstops: AMD, Intel, integrated Graphics, GPU cards, Broadcom, Scanners, printers (MFC & Colour Laser), USB sound boxes, Wacom tablets. All worked.

Win7 installs wrong drivers for the Wacom & Creative USB Sound box.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Almost all PCs sold these days run the 64-bit Win 10

Which is why MS supplies a free 32 bit VM with XP for certain versions, or did, which supports NTVDM and WOW32-16.

There ARE 64 bit OSes that run 32bit and 16 bit x86. MS 64Bit Win7 & Win 10 is less compatible with even 32bit Win applications than an x86 atom tablet with USB keyboard and 32bit Win 10.

MS HAS lost the plot. That's why my day to day laptop is now Linux Mint for last year (Been using Linux since 1999 and spent many years supporting & selling Windows). I do have a 64 bit Win desktop (for testing) and a 32bit Win 10 x86 Tablet (novelty value/tests) as well as boxes & laptops with WFWG3.11, Win98, Win2K, XP and Win7. No Windows server for some years (since WSUS or what ever it was called was ditched. We had IIS & MSQL as well as MSQL & Apache on Win2K Advanced Server).

I don't run Sage etc now, so no longer need Windows.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: 3) You can't improve products by testing

You test to see if the product is compliant with design or if implementation is correct. It doesn't work if "so called" testing is instead of defensive programming and good design and the underlying problem isn't addressed. MS seems to be mostly using automated telemetry to see what kludges and patches to do.

You can only find mistakes by testing, not improve product, and uncontrolled use by millions is just poor unpaid crowd sourced tests of a very low value.

Mage Silver badge

Re: broadly akin to open-source software?

Not remotely.

You are focusing on one very narrow aspect.

Also unlike Vista, Win8, Win10: if Ubuntu / debian / Redhat / Suse etc mess up badly then some savvy folk will say "Fork YOU!" Hence CentOS (not exactly a fork) and now Linux Mint has overtaken Ubuntu (largely because of Unity & Gnome). There is also Free BSD, Open Solaris, Open VMS, and a Linux without Systemd.

See also: MySQL vs MariaDB, Hudson vs Jenkins, OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

Mage Silver badge

Re: pretty much every single alpha/beta test

No. Because proper programs use properly selected, statistically significant people and are properly analysed. There is too much of a self selection bias, too many people, too much analysis by telemetry and software algorithms set up to tell the managers what they want to hear.

+

They'd be better off without it. Four years of stupidity of Win10 GUI and slurping proves it. They are still designing for a new platform that no-one wants and mobile/tablet, which is dead for Windows.

What sells windows (apart from being pre-installed) is ability to run stuff even from 16 bit windows. Legacy & Business applications. People using just email, web and Office for home use are not depending on windows at all.

Since 2004, MS has concentrated on the wrong things.

Yes there are also PC Games. The Xbox family was supposed to be the future for that.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Windows insider Program

A total mistake for four reasons:

1) Totally unrepresentative of real Windows users.

2) Leads to lazy QC / QA as mentioned.

3) You can't improve products by testing, but by improved design & implementation

4) Focus groups, such programs, become echo chambers and encourage "design" by committee instead of a handful of experienced experts.

Started in 2014, but the rot set in as MS about 10 years earlier.

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

Torvalds schedules Linux kernel 5.0, then maybe delays 'meaningless' release

Mage Silver badge

Re: version 2.4 to 2.6 broke drivers

I remember some grief with a PCMCIA based RF modem. The supplier would not supply source, nor update it, so we had to find suitable old versions of Linux.

The law of run Nintendo consequences: Sega brings out mini Mega Drive / Genesis

Mage Silver badge
Windows

special nostalgia glow

You'd be wanting to buy some of my (working) CRT based TV sets then. Not that I'm particularly selling, they are in the attic and shipping is costly.

Google accidentally reveals new swipe-happy Android UI

Mage Silver badge

Re: ..amazingly, one-quarter ... continues to run a version... released in 2014.

It would be higher if the stupid stuff didn't (a) break, or (b) become incompatible with most main apps. See iBooks on iPhone.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Please no

Unless a Gesture GUI is self evident and obvious, it's a fail. It's been tried MANY times since 1970s. I worked on one in the late 1980s.

There are only a subset of the GUI things needed that are obvious gestures.

Also almost all most need two hands or a stable larger than phone screen on a desk.

UK pub chain Wetherspoons' last call: ♫ Just a spoonful of Twitter – let's pull social media down ♫

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Brillaint

Now can PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTERS with massive websites and IT budgets stop subsidising and promoting the so called Social Media Parasites too?

BBC, RTE, C4 etc.

~

Actually NO commercial entity should be using Facebook or Twitter for customer support. If they want to advertise on it that should on same basis as Billboards and especially the audited papers, magazines, TV and Radio. You'd never believe a paper's own claims of circulation. Maybe half of adverts paid for to Google are fraud. Who knows about Facebook?

Best thing about a smart toilet? You can take your mobile in without polluting it

Mage Silver badge

Re: live in interesting times!

Though there is a Chinese saying with similar intent this one seems to be a 19th C. English invention. The closest Chinese is "Better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic period."

~

Curiously the "Willow Pattern" china is an English invention too, in the late 18th C., adopted later by Chinese copies. Though it was inspired by Chinese designs. The fable was made up later as marketing by a UK company.

~

I like to research things that my characters might say in my books, so I don't inadvertently reinforce urban myths. Some do have an element of truth, but in intent are false.