Re: If only
I have to put up with never ending shite I don't like
I switch to channel V or CBS and watch never ending shite I do like
Posts by itzman
1946 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jun 2011
Page:
Romania suffers Eurovision premature ejection
Brit AI genius dies
FreeBSD 10.3 lands
Monday 4th April 2016 11:06 GMT
Re: 1980s coder
In your linked page you observe that...
UNIX was never designed to be used this way, as a simplistic one-user desktop with virtually no learning curve.
No, but it does it a heck of a sight better than windows when all is said and done. And is that a reason not to use it in that rôle?
I mean, you sound like a grumpy old man saying 'The world has changed' without actually recognising that you can still have crumpets and Marmite for breakfast, if you REALLY want to, but there is a bit more choice today.
Monday 4th April 2016 10:57 GMT
Re: No one expects users to RTFM
silver-spoon fed generation thinks Ubuntu and Mint are the gold standard, because you don't have to read or understand anything to get started and keep going, then that's where those users should be and stay, please. Just don't bring that attitude close to production environments, mkay?
Make that silver-haired.
Actually mostly what I want an OS to do is just enable me to use a bloody computer OK without breaking down every third hour and costing a fortune I dont have.
And I am afraid that of all the stuff I have tried, Linux Mint comes top for 'just working' and not being so feature rich (bloated) or so 'minimal' (unconfigurable) or so full of spyware (Windows).
BSD is probably cool if all you ever use is Emacs. However I use a deal more than that.
Got a Toshiba laptop? Get it off your lap, then read this recall notice
Forget black helicopters, FBI flying surveillance Cessnas over US cities. Warrant? What's that?
US govt says it has cracked killer's iPhone, legs it from Apple fight
Tuesday 29th March 2016 10:35 GMT
Re: Every device being hackable
Indeed. The best cryptography is so well hidden that it doesn't even look like there is encrypted data at all, and even if you know there is, its buried in noise.
Given a big enough data set, and a small enough message, its possible to hide anything in it, or indeed several different things, some of which may be red herrings.
Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage
Saturday 26th March 2016 11:10 GMT
Re: Don't blame users for the UI
I suggest that Microsoft was *ACTIVELY* *SILENCING* the opposition to what Windows 10 ended up being. Hardly "listening" at all.
A sort of 'hundred flowers' campaign?
"The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science." After this brief period of liberalization, Mao abruptly changed course. The crackdown continued through 1957 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology. Those targeted were publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps. Mao remarked at the time that he had "enticed the snakes out of their caves."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
Saturday 26th March 2016 06:04 GMT
Re: I'll give you a clue: no, you don't. You really, really don't....
I had to laugh. At all those firms who paid Moodies to tell them how safe junk /sub prime bonds wrapped in junk insurance were.
I suppose its more of this 'progress' thing. You don't think for yourself any more, just pay someone else, and then sue them when it all goes wrong.
Saturday 26th March 2016 05:31 GMT
Re:No change is no progress
Ohmigawd! The bacon I have for breakfast hasn't changed in Years darling! so much for progress!
Without Progress, my breakfast might stay the same for Years!
Let''s face it, I didn't start eating Breakfast because I was hungry, but because I was so fashionable...
Sorry fans, gotta rush off to my third sex change operation. Progress .....progress.
So where has the legal 'right' to 10Mbps broadband gone?
Microsoft will rest its jackboot on Windows 7, 8.1's throat on new Intel CPUs in 2018 – not 2017
Saturday 19th March 2016 12:09 GMT 
Microsoft has lost it's way.
This is a bit déjà vu, like when IBM slowly switched from hardware and software to business systems in the broadest sense.
Microsoft has some stuff people still want. Apparently SQL server, and that dreadful office suite.
What they dont want, is Windows. They suffer it, they tolerate it, they live with it, because that's what the code they need to run, has to run ON.
If the code runs on android and windows, they pick the android product in spades.
The desktop workstation is in decline and so is in the end Windows. Nearly all the generic apps that you need on a desktop are there on a linux or OSX desktop. All that is left is a rump of specialised apps that are 'have to haves' for niche industries.
And you can run virtual machines for those if you have to.
I seriously dont see where Microsoft can go from here.
Its a legacy thing, these days.
Western Digital spins up a USB disk just for the Raspberry Pi
Tech biz bosses tell El Reg a Brexit will lead to a UK Techxit
Friday 11th March 2016 18:06 GMT
The end to freedom of movement that being a member state of the EU has provided.???
Er no, that has NOTHING to do with the EU. We aren't even IN Shengen.
And there is nothing to stop a simple rubber stamp 'you have a job, here is a work permit' type arrangement.
Al this FUD that assumes the EU will behave like a sulky teenager and refuse to deal with Britain at all, is incredible.
Steve Ballmer: Get the Facts. I 'love' SQL Server on Linux
Friday 11th March 2016 15:20 GMT
Windows on Linux next?
I would imagine the next step is a Microsoft wine-like shim that sits on Linux and allows you to run windows and and all other winapps on linux, followed by a full blown 'comes with a linux kernel' release of Windows.
Windows is then just another linux distro ;-)
BUT of course that will be a cue to start to take over Linux..
Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail
Friday 4th March 2016 15:32 GMT
battery charge times
Under 5 minutes is possible, if a little inefficient and heat producing, with some cells.
The main constraint is energy per unit weight. It simply isn't good enough yet, and it would push the limits of battery technology to get it almost there.
Everybody is working on 'promising technology' but frankly I am skeptical. Batteries are well understood beasts and although incremental improvements are possible, I doubt that total breakthroughs are.
'Boss, I've got a bug fix: Nuke the whole thing from orbit, rewrite it all'
Wednesday 2nd March 2016 12:21 GMT
Re: Code should not be clever, it should be maintainable and easy to read(Beastly, Just Beastly)
Unfortunately sometimes clever code is precisely what is the most maintainable and easy to read.
If your compiler allows you to write it.
Years ago I had a situation where I wanted to a call one of three subroutines depending on a variable whose value was 0, 1 or 2. 6809 processor.
In assembler, the job was simple. Shift the value left one bit to turn the 8 bit number into a 16 bit offset, add to the base memory address of the call table in which three addresses of three subroutines are stored, and call the address so pointed to.
The C compiler didn't recognise an array of pointers to functions..
After a wasted day it became if then else if then else...
Wednesday 2nd March 2016 12:14 GMT
Re: Well, this article'll cause some arguments, eh?
Actually my favourite if I need a goto style fatal error handler is setjmp()/longjmp() and friends.
No matter where you are, or how deeply nested, you end up in a high level error handler that can examine the state of the machine, decide what to do, and do it.
Better still...
if(err=setjmp(Env))
DoErrorStuff(err);
...means that ALL your fatal error handling is well away from the code that is doing the real business of the program.
We're doing SETI the wrong and long way around, say boffins
Wednesday 2nd March 2016 07:33 GMT 
How Alien is Alien?
"It's impossible to predict whether extraterrestrials use the same observational techniques as we do," says Heller. "But they will have to deal with the same physical principles as we do, and Earth's solar transits are an obvious method to detect us."
I was going to say, what an assumption, but in fact it has to be what presumption!
WE are looking for aliens who are in fact not alien, but are just like us.
In fact there is a school of thought that says that we are being invaded by aliens all the time, and the only notice we take is to say 'I think I must have another cold'
My devil-possessed smartphone tried to emasculate me
Ukraine has a Eurovision pop at Russia
Linux Mint hacked: Malware-infected ISOs linked from official site
Monday 22nd February 2016 09:40 GMT 
ROTFFLMFAO!
There's nothing wrong with wordpress if you want an out of the box solution that takes longer to master than to write your own.
That reminds me of the '1001 things to use an Apple MACintosh for', back in the day.
1000: Use it to prop the Windows open.
1001: Drop it out of Windows to kill stray cats.
Monday 22nd February 2016 09:31 GMT
Re: The year of the Linux desktop..
Back around 1990, I was informed that 'this would be the year of Unix'...
...and in 1991,1992...in fact what happened was that over a period of 25 years, first Unix, then Linux, has very slowly, simply become the de facto operating system kernel for almost everything (except for Windows).
Why?
Because it offered lower costs to hardware and software developers.
There's a lot about Unix and Linux that is not optimal - X windows is perhaps the greatest abortion along with Postscript, that has ever been foisted on an undeserving community, but at least they are open standards.
As is TCP/IP and so on. In the end open standards work, because they make the barrier to entry of any proprietary system massive. Only Windows that was first on the scene, by a massive and unpleasant use of de facto monopoly has managed to protect its shrinking user base.
If it were worth anyone's while, a reverse engineered shim on top of Linux that did more than wine does, to enable Windows programs to tun more or less natively in Linux, would have been written. Already many new apps are using cross platform toolkits that mean that programs for OSX Windows and Linux are available. Eventually mainstream paid for apps will be ported one way or the other.
Sir Clive Sinclair in tech tin-rattle triumph
Sunday 21st February 2016 16:29 GMT
Re: Hard to take seriously
Well exactly. Whenever Clive came up with something people did want, it was technically infeasible, and whenever he came up with something that was technically feasible it was in general worse than someone else's product.
We all dreamed of having a pocket TV, today, with 4G and smart phones 42 years later, we have it, but it says Samsung on it.
Brits unveil 'revolutionary' hydrogen-powered car
China 'evacuates' 9,000 around monster radio 'scope
New Monopoly version features an Automatic Teller Machine
Good thing this dev quit. I'd have fired him. Out of a cannon. Into the sun
Wednesday 17th February 2016 11:29 GMT
All code should be rewritten from scratch...
...at least 3 times.
Because until you have written it twice, you don't actually know the best way to write it.
Byte time I am on iteration 3, all the bits that belong in subroutines, are, not because they are called twice, but because they are details in a larger picture which I want the main code to represent. And all the run time errors that happened whilst developing that show up as segfaults where a particular unanticipated condition has in fact occurred, are now catered for by extra error handling again put in its own file generally.
Version one is hacked till it works - some of the time.
Version two works, nearly all the time, but is messy ugly spaghetti code.
Version three works all the times so far, and is somewhat neat structured and well commented so that even I will understand it when I need to look at it in a years time.
Some people think that careful planning will get you there first time. I disagree.
Careful planning only deals with the contingencies you thought of, not the ones you didn't and careful planning beyond a certain point takes longer than hacking it till it works, and going through the alpha beta release cycles
Shopping for PCs? This is what you'll be offered in 2016
How to build a plane that never needs to land
Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe
Saturday 13th February 2016 12:11 GMT
Re: Shakespeare? who is he anyway?
The point is that he was just as influential as say Knuth is in computer science. Their legacies live on, although you may consider that neither are worth studying, the fact remains that of you want to understand the fundamentals of the (human) world you live in, they both have had a lasting effect.
Shakespeare, and the Bible form a vast repository of useful aphorisms.
And also just about every single twist of human drama there is.
To understand Anti-Semitism, a quick glance at the Merchant of Venice reveals its early history for example. As well as both sides of the coin.
Power and politics are treated also. As is love and betrayal. Sometimes a play is a good way tp communicate a picture of these things. The problem I have with modern RSC re-interpretations is that they are clumsy politically correct arty farty nonsense. You have to see Shakespeare as what it was - 16th century entertainment, plus a wry comment on human nature, for a world in which literacy was a rare thing.
Merely learning the plays is not studying shakespeare. Understanding who he was an why he wrote what he wrote and for whom,. is far more interesting.
Saturday 13th February 2016 10:11 GMT 
Shakespeare? who is he anyway?
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare 'It's Greek to me',
you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning,
you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you recall your salad days,
you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you act more in sorrow than in anger,
if your wish is father to the thought,
if your lost property has vanished into thin air,
you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy,
if you have played fast and loose,
if you have been tongue-tied,
a tower of strength,
hoodwinked or in a pickle,
if you have knitted your brows,
made a virtue of necessity,
insisted on fair play,
slept not one wink,
stood on ceremony,
danced attendance (on your lord and master),
laughed yourself into stitches,
had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing,
if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise --
why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare;
if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage,
if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it,
if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood,
if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play,
if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason,
then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare;
even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing,
if you wish I was dead as a doornail,
if you think I am an eyesore,
a laughing stock,
the devil incarnate,
a stony-hearted villain,
bloody-minded or a blinking idiot,
then -- by Jove!
O Lord!
Tut, tut!
For goodness' sake!
What the dickens!
But me no buts,
It’s all one to me, for YOU ARE QUOTING SHAKESPEARE!
Written by the journalist and drama critic, the Late Bernard Levin, that Shakespearean amusement reminds us that this year is the 450th birthday of the greatest dramatist and the greatest writer of the English language who ever lived.
Saturday 13th February 2016 10:08 GMT
Re: My own creativity is expressed not through writing plays
That rather misses the point.
Faced with the inevitability of personal mortality, why not just get it over with and top yourself now, to save the bother of having to live out a life that will in the end logically be completely meaningless?
The whole point of the Arts and the so called humanities is to explore the emotional reasons why we choose to go on living, and in what way we choose to live and what goals we pursue, whereas the whole purpose of the creative technical and scientific arts is to help us achieve those goals.
To put it poetically, your heart tells you where you want to go, but your head tells you how best to get there.
This is reflected politically in Left/Right politics which are broadly, in the case if the Left, aspirational, emotional, reflecting a desire to have a society somewhat other than it is, and the Right, which says 'well ok, that's all very nice but, to get there we need practical solutions to practical problems, not airy fairy lefty nonsense'.
Whether you feel that a person should be dedicated to exploring the emotional realms or dedicated entirely to the exploration of practical common sense is of course another emotional issue only you can answer for yourself :-)
Free science journal library gains notoriety, lands injunctions
The field at the centre of the universe: Cambridge's outdoor pulsar pusher
Indonesian comms ministry orders 'gay emoji' block
Saturday 13th February 2016 08:50 GMT
Re: ""gay" is, unsurprisingly, *not* a synonym for "stupid""
I've often wondered why people who use "gay" to mean "bad" never logically extend it and use "straight" to mean "good". And do they think bisexuality is mediocre?
Well first of all, they dont use 'gay' to mean 'bad' or 'stupid' they tend to use it to mean decorative but dysfunctional, in a rather amusing way. Like tailfins on a car.
Secondly, no one uses 'straight' as the opposite of 'gay'. I am afraid they tend to use the word 'normal' or if they are old enough 'melancholy'..
Scariest climate change prediction yet: More time to eat plane food
Friday 12th February 2016 13:11 GMT
Re: AC: "I miss Lewis :("
And what advantages do we really have in a dependence on fossil fuel?
Oh, the mere fact that without it modern civilisation as we know it would cease to exist in a matter of days, along with 90% of the worlds population?
But dont worry your pretty little head about it, keep voting green (or red: not much difference these says).
Friday 12th February 2016 13:08 GMT
Re: False premise leads to false results
"When over 97% of those qualified to study the evidence find it compelling, only a conspiracy theory explains your so-called scepticism."...
...If indeed there is any evidence at all that 97% did find it compelling: If not the fact that its been stated so often is, itself evidence of a conspiracy...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
