Posts by RyokuMas

Re: Makes a change

Personally, I'd still rather take my chances than install this - call me irresponsible if you will, but my distrust for big corporations and politicians is probably deeper-rooted than a linux user's grudge against Microsoft...

Re: If the CFO's are worried

If that's how you FEEL Bob, then I suggest you do one of the following:

- Swallow your pride (yeah right, as if that's going to happen) and try a different stack/role - I'm still getting scalper emails for permanent .NET web-dev roles at least twice a week... just' sayin' (again)

- Volunteer at a hospital or mortuary - they could sure use the help and hey, if you end up getting COVID19, well that's just going to help build that good ole herd immunity, right?

- Or, since you've obviously drunk Mr. Trump's kool aid, try drinking - or injecting - something else he suggested.

Re: "the global pandemic derailed Apple and the rest of the industry"

"... look at how they treated the rest of the world with respect to masks and gloves..."

Kinda like Trump did to Canada?

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

Re: The thing about a 1995 Nissan Micra is...

... and it doesn't upload everything you do with it back to Nissan HQ for profiling.

Re: How long before his site is DoS'd or forced to be taken down?

"Might want to get your caps lock fixed while you're at it."

Oh, that's just to make it look more 3D. Lower case is so flatty-mc-flatso...

Re: The consequences are simple

" There's nothing to stop them indexing their own material..."

Quite so. However, given that we are now in a state where the very word "Google" is used in common parlance as a verb meaning "to search on the internet", what do you think the chances would be of such a rival search engine gaining any significant traction?

Google has land-grabbed its way to the top in search - and quite rightly so at the time, since when this happened, it was easily the best search engine out there. The issue here is that the power that such a position provided was not recognised until it was too late. For example, one of the biggest (if not the single biggest) reasons that Chrome is currently the number one browser is because Google plastered their search pages with calls to action stating to "download Chrome for a better browsing experience".

Somehow, I doubt Google would willingly list such a rival search engine on their browser. Same with Android, and I would not be surprised if a swathe of Youtube ads hit to promote Google search in this event as well.

Then there's perception to consider - despite the fact that a lot of us tech-savvy have wised up to Google (the vote-counts from five years ago compared to now are an interesting read!), a lot of the average public still consider Google as go-to and gold standard. So if this new search engine started offering "different results" to Google, chances are that people would not think it as good.

Lastly, it's not just search that such an engine would need to crack - it's analytics as well. An entire industry - SEO - has grown up around reading the site data provided by Google and trying to second-guess what Google will do next. Have you ever heard anyone worrying about their Duck Duck Go ranking? A new search engine would have to offer data similar to Google analytics in order to enable SEO, and then become significant quickly enough to create the disruption required to break into the market.

So yes, someone else could create their own search engine and deny Google their content. But they would also have to win the hearts and minds of the users, and given how deeply Google is entrenched in our lives (Search, Chrome, Analytics, Youtube, Android, Nest, Gmail, Maps, etc., etc.), this would be not so much an uphill battle but like attempting to climb a near vertical ice-sheet without crampons.

Re: shutdowns are EXCESSIVE - just be ready to treat people

"SHUTTING DOWN THE ECONOMIES - *RIDICULOUS*"

Some pretty strong FEELINGS there, Bob! Good job feelings are irrelevant, eh?

Here's something to THINK about: The UK coronavirus strategy was initially for herd immunity. It did an abrupt u-turn and went into lockdown when it was pointed out that between quarter and half a million people would die - not because their situation made them any more or less vulnerable than anyone else, but because the health service would be unable to cope with the sheer numbers.

This is not feelings - this is facts: there are only so many hospital beds available. If more people are sick with a potentially fatal illness than there are hospital beds then someone has to be left to take their chances and possibly die - someone who, with the proper care and treatment - may well have survived and (since you seem to worship the almighty dollar) continued contributing to the economy.

Ramp that up to the quarter to half million fatalities in the UK alone that were calculated from the herd immunity strategy, and that's a lot of people.

The lockdown is not about preventing people getting this illness - until we do have herd immunity, it's pretty much inevitable. It's about preventing the health services from collapsing under the strain - the whole "flattening the curve" thing. After all, the more staff there are treating coronavirus cases, the greater the exposure rate and therefore the greater number of those vital staff having to take time off to recover - or worse, being lost to this disease.

And given your overall attitude, I'd be willing to be that if you ended up with coronavirus, but were unable to see a doctor, you would be the first one to start whining about it, probably with various cases of "how healthcare was better in the old days".

If you really want to contribute to the situation, I suggest that - since you have the time to spare - you volunteer in a hospital or a morgue or something (I would suggest the latter, if your bedside manner is anything like your comments on here). That way, instead of bemoaning the situation, you can actually make a difference and hey! if you're lucky, you might even get coronavirus yourself and start contributing to that "herd immunity" you keep citing as a valid reason to put people at risk (in which case, hope your health insurance is up to date)!

Maybe having to deal with it yourself - possibly (if it's severe enough to cause you to question your own mortality*) you might actually realise people are losing loved ones left, right and centre.

Tell me - how would you FEEL if you lost a family member?

Oh, that's right - feelings are irrelevant.

Re: And yet another tax fiddle

"Amazingly the tax man in the UK is hounding every little one man show and trying to grab tax off him..."

Of course - take a "big boy" to court over tax and you're in for months - if not years - of legal pissing contest, of appeal and counter appeal as the lawyers from both sides try every loophole under the sun to win their case... with the only real winners being the lawyers and the losers being the taxpayers who have paid the tax man's costs.

Whereas a small fry - well, he's not got the money for an extended legal battle, so he's either gonna roll over or go bankrupt.

It's exactly the same principle as the big boys suing the small fry for infringement of copyrights, patents, trademarks etc.

Re: biggest losers from "shutdowns"

I'm still getting plenty of emails from headhunters for permanent .NET developer roles... just sayin'...

Re: Sensible idea

With a service module cryo-tank coil a la Apollo 13?

"Housten, we have a solution..."

Re: Welcome to the new Microsoft era!

To be fair, if the general public had not been suckered by the Google/Facebook "free stuff - just agree to us tracking and selling your data!" strategy, chances are Microsoft would not be doing this.

... but, as has happened a number of times in recent years, they're just following the trend and arriving late to the party...

Le sigh...

Hmmm. So all the while I'm trying to do something productive, I'm going to be distracted by something moving along the bottom of my screen...

Good job Microsoft's foot-shooting is only metaphorical - otherwise they'd be competing for "top reason fo being in hospital" against COVID-19...

Re: "Dual-screen support is coming soon"

"Technology is awesome."

Got that right. Imagine if this coronavirus thing had hit a couple of decade earlier: smack on the dotcom boom/bust, most people still on dial-up, no home delivery services for groceries, hours of waiting on on engaged phone lines...

Re: Telco can locate people well enough

"Google location services can be turned off..."

Really???

... okay, so that was a while back now, but it would't surprise me if they had just made a token apology and carried on regardless...

Re: MS at least try to be the good guys every now and then

Ah yes, the "selective reading" counter-argument - opting to completely miss the acknowledgement that Windows' security is not up to the standard of other operating systems in order to express personal feelings (.. and should that last work be in caps?)

So here it is again: yes, Windows security is far from brilliant, and others do it better. However, the weakest link in the chain is invariably the end user. And due to their more niche adoption, the end users of these other operating systems - especially outside the business environment - tend to be more tech-savvy and clued up on security that the average Joe who has just bought a new Windows 10 box from PC World.

When the reward is great enough, there will always be someone willing to spend the time needed to find a way of attacking a system - be that directly through exploiting how the system is build (and yes, to re-iterate, Windows is especially guilty of this), or through its users. Android is a prime example of this - yes, in this case the attack almost always involves manipulating the user in some way as this approach requires the lowest effort.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether the box is running Windows or something else, stopping Joe Average from clicking that link which promises fast cash/nude pics/whatever is a battle of education. Maybe if the more vocal, self-righteous members of the communities surrounding these other operating systems stopped counting their votes, got down of their anti-Windows soap boxes and started actually explaining to the less tech-savvy what the issue is and how to use these other operating systems to overcome it, perhaps these other operating systems would stand a greater chance of gaining traction...

Re: Veracious

I'd say more "introspective" than "maudlin"...

... but the ending proves that no matter what he feels, we can always count on the BOFH to give the poor schmucktrainee a push in the right direction...

...

...

...

... gravity will take care of the rest.

Apples, oranges (or "lies, damn lies and statistics")...

"And somewhere WAY down the list, is C-pound... pathetically trying to stay RELEVANT

According to their site, The [TIOBE] ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search engines. (see the "Ratings" section near the bottom). So TIOBE enter +"[language name] programming" into various search engines and count the results.

Whereas RedMonk extract their results from Github and Stack Overflow - in their own words, they are trying to rank based on code and traction.

Hands up who remembers the early days of SEO, when keyword stuffing was still a thing? Okay, search engines are a lot better now, but when you're doing a spider of a results set, that's all the results from the most relevant to the least, and potentially a lot of historical data too - Google-searching for "C++ programming" and jumping to the last page revealed a 2007 book, for example...

Whether or not TIOBE's system is clever enough to remove these sort of results - well, I can't say. Similarly, I've no idea exactly how clever RedMonk's system is, although since pull requests and Stack Overflow posts/replies have datestamps, I'd imagine they'd filter out historical data. The point is that comparing these two ranking systems is like comparing apples with oranges. And, as TIOBE themselves point out:

"It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written"

So maybe over the last two years more pull requests have been submitted and more Stack Overflow questions have been asked regarding C# than C++ - again, I can't answer that. But given howls of derision when Microsoft bought out Github, and that C# is primarily a Microsoft language, I can see how the knee-jerk "because it's Microsoft" brigade might not be committing so many lines to Github any more.

Ultimately, it's possible to twist any form of statistics when presenting them: for example, it's very easy to say "ah yes, C# only gets a 4% rating on average", and conveniently overlook the fact that on C# has on average ranked in 5th position on the TIOBE index for the last decade (see the "Very Long Term History" section). I guess it all depends on how strongly the person posting FEELS (as opposed to how rationally they THINK).

Re: Squaring the circle

"... any doctor I happen to be consulting."

In that case you might as well have let Google see you naked...

Google-bashing aside, this is exactly why this all-or-nothing mentality exists towards privacy - for years the web giants have been grabbing every bit of data they can, often regardless of the morality of doing so, and trying to claim it was an accident/mistake when caught.

All-or-nothing privacy is years of privacy abuse coming home to roost - personally, I trust Google - or Facebook, or any of the other "big web" companies - with my data about as far as I'd trust Rolf Harris to babysit my kids.

Re: Annoying tho

"some point it might become the *ONLY* browser"

More importantly, let's keep in mind that some 75-plus percent of websites use Google Analytics.

How long before any pages that allow download over HTTP (so long as you're not using Chrome) suddenly start dropping off search results?

Re: AC cos I'm ashamed of saying something nice about Vista

Bah, you young whippersnapper, I remember having to work with less than a tenth of that!

Re: "Microsoft Loves the Web"

"If its the same ad again that you've already looked at , its effectively blocking new ads"

I'm trying to figure out if you're deliberately missing the point for the sake of provoking an argument...

Personally, I would rather see a different ad every time and retain my privacy, rather than be stalked round the net by various tracking technologies. Especially if said ads were "poster" style ie: flat text or an image, not obtrusive, not video or animation, no sound.

Re: It's actually not that hard

So let me get this straight...

You would rather write your own code for a purpose than use something that already exists.

You reckon your code is bulletproof and that unit tests aren't neccessary.

You blindly hate change (insert usual slew of references to ".Not", "2D interfaces" etc. here).

You think how people feel is irrelevant, despite repeatedly expressing strong feelings yourself.

You believe that anyone who disagrees with you is a "howler monkey", and present your opinions using a range of emphases that attempt to ram them down the throats of others (again, despite stating your own dislike for those that do exactly this) instead of engaging in calm, rational and meaningful debate.

I sincerely hope for your own sake that this is all an "internet persona". If not, I would strongly suggest that you read this, and give it some serious consideration before you piss off someone who can sack you.

Re: "Visual Studio is a paid-for product"

"When you get older you'll come to realise that in more ways than you can possibly imagine right now"

When I get much older, I'll probably be too dead to care, to be quite honest...

I'm in my mid 40s, and computers have been part of my life since before I turned 10 - as hobby, then degree and now over twenty years commercial experience. I've seen a lot of change - not as much as others on here, I'll grant you, but I am no stranger to it. The key difference here is that I am not afraid of change, regardless of whether I feel it is better, worse or has no real impact.

I accept fully that others may not share this lack of fear - heck, I was the black sheep for my entire time at secondary school as I embraced this "computer fad", which was threatening to disrupt an old and very traditional - and therefore fearful of change - establishment.

But change is inevitable, for without it, we wither and die. And, as I said, it's not always "better" - but that's just my opinion, which I will voice in what I hope is reasonable and rational debate. So, for example, I would agree that the single quotes style of emphasis is easier and quicker, but not as immediately obvious as using a tag - however, it's not overly intrusive on the eye when reading it so... no real impact, no fuss.

However, excessive and continual use of practices that many - not just myself - see as the typed equivalent to a five year old continuously yelling "I am right, listen to me!" will incur a response that will gradually descend into ridicule and even post-reporting when the content of the post start impinging on the forum comment guidelines.

Growing old is mandatory, growing up... not so much. And unfortunately, there are those who, regardless of their feelings about change, seem unable to express themselves in an adult manner.

"they'll be replacing Windows with Android next..."

Hey, does that mean it'll finally be the year of Linux on the Desktop???

Re: "the number of attacks has dropped by 93 per cent"

"Which Ubisoft game(s) are you referring to specifically?"

I wasn't - I was taking a step back and looking at the games as a whole. Apologies for not specifying this explicitly.

And I absolutely think that the artists, programmers, composers, designers, testers et al involved in making a game should be justly rewarded - in fact, if you look back through my posts, you'll see that as a hobbyist game developer I have often bemoaned the state of the games industry.

... except we all know that these aren't the people who are reaping the benefits. Just try searching the web for "EA Spouse". Or the more recent "100 hour week" scandal at Rockstar. Or - seeing as we're looking at Ubisoft here - this.

If it were the actual creative talents getting the payoff from these mechanics then I would be more supportive. But paywalls and free-to-pay, pay-to-win are primarily a device created by the corporates to turn games into money-milking machines, and the only time the devs get anything out of it is when they are tasked with making additional content so that people keep playing these games and thus generating even more revenue for the executives.

Re: Whats the problem with unsafe code in Rust?

"And all code is written properly of course."

Oh, but real programmers write bullet-proof code - didn't you know this?

And, heaven forbid that we let college grads write code that actually goes into production, just in case they develop this "experience" thing, come up with new ways of solving problems and put all the ageing code hacks who are too stuck in their ways to accept change out of a job...

Re: it's an ASSAULT

"it is i dunno wot all those caps"

It's a means of emphasis commonly employed by those who don't understand how to use the strong tag, and whose vocabulary means that they cannot express themselves otherwise.

In other words it's to express strong feelings. Which, apparently are irrelevant...