Posts by Ross K
342 posts • joined Monday 14th February 2011 14:57 GMT
Re: Ross K.
How do you plan to retrain your staff for the upcoming Windows 8 system so they could handle the lack of the Start Button?
Retrain for what?
Tell you what - go look at Classic Shell for five minutes and come back to me. I believe you freetards are familiar with the concept of bodging a user interface to get it to work right...
Re: "Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...
Looking purely at the office and nothing else-
- MS office is designed to run on windows only (After which wine was created)
Yep, it's been around since 1989 or 1990 and it's the de facto standard just like Windows.
They don't need to make a linux version as some people seem to be happy to run it in Wine and still pay the "Microsoft tax". Even if they did make a linux version, surely it would be anathema to the average open-sourcer?
- MS office is generally incompatible, even with different versions of itself
"Generally incompatible", with what? Please elaborate... In Office 2007 and newer you tick a box in the options menu to save in the older .doc or .xls format as opposed to .docx or .xlsx, so it's not true to say it's not even compatible with itself.
- MS office is freaking expensive
Yes it is. That's business. It's in demand so they're hardly going to give it away for free. The price does vary - if your company's on a volume licensing agreement, you're obviously not going to be paying the same price you would if you walked into PC World.
Nice Work...
...However I do prefer Ben Heck's modern take on the combo console:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAYJ-6iWE4
Re: "Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...
There are a lot of companies out there offering support for Linux. Red Hat for one, if you are a large organisation, but there are others.
I don't know if you don't understand what I'm saying, or if you're deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying.
I'm talking about desktop support here - as someone said earlier: the desktop is where the work is done. The helpdesk or the FS guys (or girls) who come desk-side to educate Ethel in accounts because she can't do something in OpenGraph (or whatever you want to call it) like she used to in Excel....know what I mean? it's all very well saying RedHat offer support but they're not going to deal with stuff like that, are they? And what about Bill and Bob the competent Windows techs in the basement? Do they get a P45?
I commend you trying to address the kind of issues I was try to have explained to me. The fact that you were the only one that tried tell me a lot about linux fans.
I know there are so-called sysadmins out there think they're the BOFH and tview users with contempt. The users are the ones who have to eat your dog food at the end of the day, and I've seen IT departments beat a hasty retreat on more than a few occasions due to huge user resistance.
Just cos you, as a community, think something is awesome doesn't necessarily make it so in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Linux:
* possibly "awesome" if you're starting a business from scratch, if you're a one man band, or if you don't give a toss about how your users might struggle with a new OS and new software.
* definitely not "awesome" for any existing business unless you can afford to retrain your support staff to deal with it. And that's assuming your support staff WANT to be retrained - they might just fuck off and get a better job somewhere else.
Re: "Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...
Erm, well yes. But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?
Ok, so there doesn't appear to be a cost benefit if my staff are still using Office through Wine...
If you can continue to use your favourite apps then all the better.
You're still not selling it to me here. Can't I continue to use my favourite apps on my Windows boxes and save my staff the upheaval?
You need a compelling reason for changing though to compensate for the inevitable disruption.
I can't think of one, sorry.
Finally, I must bring up the one thing every linux fan doesn't want to talk about: SUPPORT. Who's gonna support linux on the desktop? if I'm a small business, my Windows techies aren't going to learn a new OS, get certified or anything else - the money isn't in the pot for training. They'll get a job somewhere else. If I'm a large company, the HP Enterprise Services or Getronics or SAIC or whoever's looking after my machines is going to rip my arse out when I ask them to tell me what the support costs are going to be...
Re: "Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...
As someone said above, the biggest barrier to business adoption of Linux is having someone in the organisation having the balls to give it a try.
Sorry, I have to disagree with you. Having the balls to give linux a try is something you do with your PC at home - back up your photos and stick in the Ubuntu CD.
Changing to linux in the workplace, especially on the desktop, is a major mind-shift.
It's all very well talking about running Office in Wine, but you still have to have a licence for it do you not? <- Not trolling on this but you do, don't you?
What head of IT is going to say "Well Office/AutoCAD/Premiere/Ethel in accounts weird Excel setup/whatever is running spiffy on WIndows, but I like making life difficult for myself. I think I'll flatten all the desktops and stick linux on. The users can still run their relevant Windows programs in an emulator and I'll still have to pay licence fees to MS. But what the hey, it's worth giving it a try!"
"Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...
Maybe linux'll be ready for the enterprise when businesses find companies willing to provide support for it.
I'm sure The Reg had an article on this very topic recently.
Oh wait, here it is:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/16/foss_survey_story/
The absence of enterprise-grade support for free and open-source software (FOSS) is the single biggest pain point for business customers who are using it...
...According to the survey, the biggest single problem businesses are encountering with FOSS is a lack of stability – applications crashing or not working properly. Twenty-five per cent gave "stability" as the biggest reason to “pay for better quality". Also on the list was ease of use, extra functionality and bug reports and fixes.
One of the comments in this very thread made made me laugh:
Ask someone why they use a Windows box and the most legitimate reply will be that there is some sort of old software which requires it.
Ha ha - a FUD quote Eadon would be proud of...
You mean some "old" software like MS Office or AutoCAD which isn't fully compatible with the "new" open source knock-off?
Re: The Linux angle...
Are you referring to the version of WEPOS that is following the same support cycle as Windows XP and hence will suffer all the same end-of-support issues come April 2014?
Nice troll attempt.
WEPOS had mainstream support until April 2011 and has extended support until April 2016.
POSReady 2009 has mainstream support until April 2014 and extended support until April 2019.
Re: Linux POS ..
This applies to any solution a business depends upon - I've many times seen ATMs and POS terminals out-of-service displaying a Windows error screen of some description.
God you're clueless. You see, this is the problem with furry-toothed geeks promoting linux.
They haven't been out of their parent's basement enough to understand how businesses outside of an office environment operate.
A bank doesn't give a toss if an ATM is out of service. 99% of the time an ATM is down it's because it's out of money, not becuz WINBL0wZ SUX0RZ. They're not losing money by having an ATM down, are they? If they want an ATM loaded out of hours it's gonna cost them to have a bunch of securicor guys go and do it.
Same with the tills in Tesco. One or two down? No biggy, there are plenty of spares. If the network goes down and ALL the tills stop working there's gonna be an engineer onsite yesterday.
It's all very well typing "free linux pos software" into Google and saying "Hurr hurr yeah look, here are six examples of linux pos software...". They're free for a reason - they're shit and any notion of support is going to involve trading emails with one of the aforementioned furry-toothed geeks.
I take it that MS support for WEPOS is significantly better than that for other versions of Windows?
Again you're talking bollocks. BIll Gates isn't going to come out to fix your till, is he? Neither is Linus Fucking Torvalds, so what's your point?
The POS software reseller is the one who comes out to provide service last time I looked.
Tell you what - why don't you show me some linux POS software that is out there on the scale of, say, ICRTouch?
Posted in Ten Windows tablets
Re: Ten Windows Tablets - the Eadon Review
@Ross K, I think maybe you have missed the point. Eadon may be having a dig at El Reg...
Now I suppose I will get voted down just because I APPEAR to be on Eadon's side...
No, that's not how he works.
I'll even upvote you to show I'm not as unreasonable as him when it comes to other points of view,
Re: Linux POS ..
Linux Point-of-Sale Software
Who's your support contract with? Will an engineer come out to fix this magical free software when your till goes titsup.com on a Friday night and the queue at the bar is 4-deep?
See the problem yet?
Re: The Linux angle...
I'm sorry, but as someone who has written POS software for Windows. I have to say that it doesn't matter if there are drivers for "pole displays" or "cash drawers".
What software was that, do you mind me asking?
We had an IBM POS System with a cash drawer connected to the display (a bit unusual, they are usually connected to the printer). The display and the drawer driver both wanted to access the serial port which obviously didn't work. The only way around would have been to turn off the display, turning on the drawer, ejecting the drawer, turing on the display again (which reset it).
What you describe is a ridiculous hardware setup, and hardly something you can blame WIndows for... Why was the software not written to kick the drawer through the dedicated DK port? Or through the printer? Without having more info, it sounds like whoever programmed the POS software was a lazy idiot.
Hi, I'm Eadon...
...and I heartily endorse this non-Windows product/service.
No seriously. £30 dearer than the Kindle Paperwhite?
If I was spunking that kind of money on an ereader, I think I'd spend a bit more and get a Kindle Fire HD... Cos that runs Android which is like totally linux, and everybody knows linux is for winners. There's a reason these things don't run M$ WINBLOWS, and that's because M1CR0SHAFT SUX at everything.*
*This may or may not be how Eadon's thought processes work. Who knows? Or frankly, who cares?
Re: A Wyse Move?
Maybe Dell felt that the Wyse brand had no recognition in the type of market they're targeting?
Dell, Wyse, whatever. It's just a sticker on a case anyway, isn't it?
Posted in Ten Windows tablets
Re: Ten Windows Tablets - the Eadon Review
Scores out of ten:
1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10, 1/10 and ... 1/10
Conclusion - they all suck.
Oh look, Eadon the sad little attention seeker has an opinion on Windows.
Why don't you share your refreshing opinions with us? I've never heard someone slag off Windows before.
When's The Reg going to give us an 'Ignore User' button?
At least then the 95% of readers who don't find trolling amusing could go about their business without having every single discussion fucked up by someone with the social skills of a 5-year-old.
Re: Image
It's a bit like professional wedding photographers, many of whom would be happy to use a mirrorless camera, if only as a back-up to their DSLR, but they know the clients expect to see some whopping great lumps of Nikon.
Is that "anecdotal evidence"? If some guy turned up to photograph a wedding with a Casio Exilim I'd guess he was either a rank amateur, a chancer or otherwise undeserving of the huge fee most wedding photographers charge.
I know photographers say the best camera is the one you've got with you, but come on...
Re: The Linux angle...
I suspect a few casual comments about needing the flexibility to do this that would force them into using Linux for these products would have focussed Microsoft's mind on the issue no doubt...
Hardly. In the world of POS the software is the USP, not the hardware it runs on.
WEPOS licences are dirt cheap and the OS is established and reliable.
Linux is a non-starter as 99.99% of POS software runs on Windows. The demand is just not there to rewrite POS software for a different OS when it already works on Windows. And then you have the driver problem - who's going to write drivers for receipt printers, pole displays, cash drawers, etc?
And as regards support? Who wants a beardy-weirdo operating system on their POS? Hardware supplier will blame the software folk and vice-versa every time something goes wrong...
Wanna buy a Dell till?
Wanna buy a Dell till? No need to pay that integrator
Would anybody out there actively seek out a Dell till? Probably not.
If they're trying to get into POS, they're entering a crowded marketplace. I don't know if anybody told them, but retail and hospitality are fucked - nobody's spending money on hardware.
As regards hardware sales Toshiba, IBM, Aures, J2, NCR, Micros and a hundred other OEMs are fighting for scraps as it is. Room for one more? Could they differentiate on the after-sales service? I doubt it...
Re: Built on top...
there is also the possibility that when the pipe was laid in the 40's it was nowhere near the town and that the people moved next to the pipeline ,in which case the local council are the ones that need a kick in the butt for allowing to happen
The pipeline's 65 years old. If you look at any photos of that street online, you can see there's no way any of the houses are that old. There 's going to be a lot of lawsuits.
if you look on Google Maps, you can see where the pipeline intersects the housing estate:
http://goo.gl/maps/1VHFv
And there are pipeline markers sticking out of the ground:
http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/290462/slide_290462_2305228_free.jpg
I'd imagine Exxon will end up having to buy every house on the street...
Re:
The land was sold cheap
Yeah, what with there being an oil pipeline buried there... I wonder were the homeowners informed when they were buying property there?
I still don't understand how houses were allowed to be built on top of an oil pipeline...
Seriously irresponsible stuff going on there
Re: Simple Explanation - MS MURDERED THE NETBOOK
The problem was that, especially as time went on, this XP version was the severely limited "Starter Edition".
Wrong.
Windows XP Home Edition and Windows 7 Starter were the installed operating systems.
Windows XP Starter Edition pre-dated netbooks and the Intel Atom. It was sold in third-world countries and could only run three programs at once. There were other restrictions but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
Re: Declining number of speakers you say?
Amazon won't distribute a publisher's books on the Kindle because 'Cymru' is not in their list of supported languages. They don't want to do this:
INSERT INTO kindle_supported_languages (name, iso-639-1, iso-639-2) VALUES ('Cymru', 'cy', 'cym');
Here was me thinking that 'Cymraeg' is the language, and that 'Cymru' is the country...
I hope your programming skills are better than your grasp of the Welsh language.
You Wot?
Mr. Pot Meet Mr. Kettle....
Re: Declining number of speakers you say?
And you are really taking the piss or showing ignorance by implying the number of Irish Gaelic speakers is negligible and inflated.
Yes, the number of Irish speakers IS negligible. Guess know how I know?
Kids are forced to learn it in school for some unknown reason - never to be used again after leaving secondary school. The time wasted teaching kids a dead language like Irish or Welsh from the age of 4 or 5 would be much better spent teaching them German, French, Polish or some other language that would improve their job prospects.
Irish is an official EU language, unlike Scots Gaelic, but try using it in any kind of official situation like dealing with a cop, or buying your road tax and you'll soon find how dead and irrelevant it is.
@Anonymous Coward 101:
It is highly problematical that a large organisation that controls the biggest selling eBook format should have the right to determine what books are sold or not sold
They can use their distribution system as they see fit - they're not running a charity.
Nothing's stopping you writing a book, setting up your own website and looking after billing and distribution...
Re: Seems like...
@Velv:
If your average annual earning are <£25 a year, £105 is quite a good profit
@Anonymous Coward:
You may not say that if you earned £10-15 a day.
Yes, in a Foxconn factory out in the sticks you might be earning that kind of money.
Even so, five people were party to the scam so it's like the money was being divided five ways.
They got themselves in the shit for what is effectively beer money.
If you're going to pull a scam and risk jail time you might as well go big or go home...
Re: Declining number of speakers you say?
Yes I read TFA.
Welsh speakers, just like speakers of Irish or Scots Gaelicare a tiny market and obviously not seen as viable by epublishers.
Again, like Irish or Scots Gaelic, I'd wager the number of Welsh speakers are even lower than the census figures suggest - people like to show their national pride by letting on they're fluent in x, y or z.
Downvote away... It's the truth.
BTW, Galician is mentioned in TFA, and is compared to Welsh by Mr Gruffudd. To put things in perspective 3 million people speak Galician - to a publisher that's still a tiny number of eyeballs but it's still a huge amount compared the number of people who use the Welsh language on a daily basis. 9 million people speak Catalan; again no comparison to Welsh...
Seems like...
...a lot of work to make £105 profit on each phone.
And did they imagine that nobody was going to notice that many returned parts?
Re: Did anyone else
That was my first thought too :)
Declining number of speakers you say?
If the number of Welsh speakers is declining, it hardly makes commercial sense to publish ebooks in Welsh does it?
Or is the Welsh Assembly going to foot the bill for conversion of the great works of literature to Welsh epub format?
Re: @cstumpi
I've put Ubuntu on a huge variety of laptops and netbooks from Asus, Lenovo, HP, Samsung, Dell etc, and it just works. No additional drivers, no command line tweaking, all sound, video and network devices at least working. Maybe not the accelerated graphics, and maybe not Bluetooth, but enough to use.
So you've got lots of experience installing linux and you can't get basic devices like bluetooth or a graphics card working properly?
I shall paste those three lines of yours in reply to Eadon every time he comes on here shitting on about how great linux is...
Re: Sanctions, nuclear enrichment, background to story
You've got no effing clue what it takes to buy a Mac of any sort in Iran under our sanctions, so grow up, realize there are other countries with different political & economic systems, and perhaps take some responsibility for what your government does in its day-to-day idiocy that affects others much more than you. Then maybe come back and be a bit judgemental
Do you even know what country I live in, let alone what "my" government's stance on Iran is?
You can't justify stealing or fencing a computer by saying that
* you're poor
* you've got a shit life
* your parents didn't hug you enough as a child
* you're ruled by a despot and can't have nice things because the USA won't sell them to you.
* you were dropped on your head as a baby, and now you're an sociopath
It's funny that I don't see you comdemn the act of stealing in any of your posts...
BTW, I don't believe you live in Iran, given the comment you made in another post:
Amazing - people seem to not understand that Iran has a repressive government, and import/purchase of these devices is not allowed.
The Iranian government doesn't prevent people buying Apple, Dell or anything else. RadanMac is probably the biggest seller of Apple gear in Iran, and sells to banks and government departments as well as the public...
Re: Simple Explanation - MS MURDERED THE NETBOOK
They sold like crazy nevertheless, yet they don't sell with Windows. If that is not a HUGE HINT, what is?
Bollocks. They sold well initially due to the fact that they were a NOVELTY, not because linux was some shit-hot netbook OS. Hell, they were given away for free with mobile phone contracts or cable TV subscriptions....
You must have selective amnesia. When netbooks came out first in 2007 you could have an Asus Eee or you could have an Asus Eee. The screen might even have been 640x480 or something equally woeful. The linux version came with some no-name piece of shit linux distro on a 2Gb non-replaceable flash drive, so it was impossible to upgrade the machine to Windows. You had twelve icons on the desktop, and that was it. Punters bought the slightly cheaper linux Eee, soon realised their mistake and returned them to the shop for the much superior XP on a larger hard drive that you could actually save stuff to...
Retailers and manufacturers got sick of taking back customer returns - that's why they made the switch to Windows.
More linux disinformation from Eadon. What a surprise.
Re: FB Phone
Facebook is all about "friends", not friends.
Really? Thanks for the education.
Re: Sanctions, nuclear enrichment, background to story
As Ahmadinejad prepares to leave office...
What's Ahmadinejad got to do with this story? Are you saying it's his fault Iranians can't buy Macbooks through legitimate channels, forcing people to buy stolen laptops from the UK? Iranian resellers have no problems getting their hand on Apple machines from other non-embargoed countries in the region, so don't kid yourself.
Not everything's a conspiracy - some people are just dodgy bastards who don't mind buying a stolen laptop when they should really just walk away... Simples.
Re: FB Phone
Anyway the very concept of this FB phone is enough to make me shudder, but it's not aimed at me, it's aimed at the exact opposite of me
Yes. People with friends.
Ha ha. You walked into that one Eadon...
"EPIC EADON FAIL"
Re: Windows 8 Laptop woudn't have got nicked
No one wants a Windows 8 laptop, not even in the 3rd world. So I've just realised that there is an upside to the dorky OS after all!
Hurrr de derp derp.
You've got one schtick and it's getting boring... We don't need the sad little linux fanboi explanation for everything.
Change the record, will you?
Re: I'm Surprised They Lasted This Long
I never owned one, but I was never under the impression that they were supposed to be hardware superior. Were you under this impression?
Hardware superior to what? Most of them were rocking a 1.6GHz Intel Atom and 1Gb RAM shared with the Intel GMA graphics driving a 1024x600 screen resolution?
Like I said, they're good for surfing the net. I dunno how that that guy who posted after you claimed to run Photoshop on one.
There were tablets before Microsoft's shitty Surface RT. The iPad? The Nexus 7? Countless Android devices? And what's your point about a keyboard? Grandma can check out Facebook or Hotmail just fine using an onscreen keyboard...
Nice To Know...
...it's ok to handle stolen goods.
The former owner of the laptop's a moron. I would have left the photos up for the world to see until the laptop was returned.
He should give the fuzz in Iran a call. Doesn't the Qur'an say that one hand should be cut off for the first theft?
I'm Surprised They Lasted This Long
Crap screens
Crap keyboards
Crap trackpads
Crap processors
They were good for surfing but not much else. No surprise that they're being played out of the game by tablets...
Gaaah. It'd be easier to get a .kp off the North Koreans than a .ie off the IEDR.
I can get a domain name in 5 minutes from GoDaddy, so unless a customer is really desperate for a .ie I'd tell them to think on...
Registering a domain in a small country is a pain in the balls. A domain registrar with too little work has plenty of time to scrutinise your application, invent stupid rules or make you jump through hoops.
Get a .kp domain guys...
Re: It Wasn't That Long Ago...
Getting a low-ranking swabbie to fast-forward through a VHS would be much cheaper than ANPR
I guess the central question here is "what's the most back-arsewards way of doing things?"
Sounds about right.
Stay Calm! Nothing To Worry About...
...as long as you're not Palestinian, or a Palestinian sympathiser.
I wonder if it'll have a realtime tracking function? Through a backdoor or otherwise?
Re: They wanted to do a Streisand!
I bet they wanted the world to know that France is still a nuclear super power. Just a guess.
They do generate 80% of their electricity by nuclear means and they developed their own nuclear weapons (as opposed to getting the yanks to give them a hand). Sounds like something a nuclear superpower would do...
French industry is nothing but a shadow of its past
You could remove 'French' from that sentence, replace it with 'British' and it would still make perfect sense.
Re: It Wasn't That Long Ago...
And no doubt there were hidden ANPR cameras in the area...
Back in the 80's and early 90's?
Remember this?
Dunno why this popped into my head: a clip from 1999 of Mark Thomas at Menwith Hill listening post...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBksQsAZ2hQ
It Wasn't That Long Ago...
...that Faslane submarine base on the Clyde and the nuke storage area at Coulport were blurred out of Google Earth.
Anybody wanting a good look inside the base just had to park up at the picnic area on the hill behind.
Re: Professional certification
Far too many employers have asked about certification (i.e. would like me to have some) but cannot name a single certificate they would like to see, nor provide any funding for obtaining any certification.
Ha ha been there - they want you to have a PhD, MCSE, CCIE and A+ before you start working for them.
And they want you to work for 25k a year...
