Sign in / up

back to article Edge-lords crack down on trackers as Microsoft effortlessly kills off PBX phone system, and what's this? Windows Calculator on iOS?

Microsoft's future might be Chromium Edge, machine learning and Azure, but there was no escaping the Ghost of Windows Past this week. Edge: Trackers begone! The built-in ability to block trackers – those pesky bits of privacy-invading code aimed at "building a digital profile" to fling targeted ads at users (and worse) – was …

COMMENTS

Post your comment
House rules Send corrections
Add to 'My topics' unstar *
  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Our company has never had phones

    You use your own mobile, you can use skype for international calls but most people end up just buying an unlimited plan.

    It's a great saving for the company. They are thinking of "bring your own lathe" as the next 'innovation'

    Of course the cost of having 2 dozen engineers sitting around for 15 minutes trying to get a Skype for business conference call between meeting rooms in 3 continents with 2 people in their cars and a few fscking Mac users. Somehow isn't accounted for.

    25 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Our company has never had phones

      > It's a great saving for the company. They are thinking of "bring your own lathe" as the next 'innovation'

      I'm sure I'm not the only one who read that as 'latte' and thought "There's nothing new there..."

      6 0 Reply
      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Our company has never had phones

        >I'm sure I'm not the only one who read that as 'latte' and thought "There's nothing new there..."

        Don't be daft. Naturally the same company that thinks an incoming phone line is a waste of money has a 20grand commercial espresso machine and buys tons of the fanciest free range coffee beans.

        10 0 Reply
      2. Robert Sneddon
        Reply Icon

        Inna box

        A place I worked in once, the contractor on the next bench over had his own lathe which he had brought with him. It fitted into a custom flightcase along with tools, power adaptors etc. He could fab up a part or two out of brass or plastic in less time than it usually took to draw something on the back of an envelope and send it out for manufacture. This was in the days before every office had its own Reprap, of course.

        Me, I want a PocketCNC.

        12 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          PocketCNC

          Is it available on iOS or only on android?

          1 0 Reply
          1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
            Reply Icon
            Coat

            Re: PocketCNC

            The iOS version is optimised for rounded corners

            4 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Our company has never had phones

      Don't you mean bring your own toilet paper?

      2 0 Reply
    3. mr_souter_Working
      Reply Icon

      Re: Our company has never had phones

      DXC - desk phones are almost non-existent (the few around are mainly because nobody has bothered to bin them yet)

      No ability to receive external calls via Skype (at least for the vast majority of us)

      No pens

      No notepads

      No mice

      No replacement hardware - unless it suffers a catastrophic failure

      .

      .

      Soon they will probably start charging us to have seats and desks.

      6 0 Reply
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Our company has never had phones

      Skype you say? You lucky people. We've been moved to Zoom

      3 0 Reply
      1. Captain Scarlet
        Reply Icon

        Re: Our company has never had phones

        Possibly Skype for Business which for some reason confuses everyone.

        User: Skype Sucks, my sound doesn't work!

        PFY: The little sound icon states it muted, did you try unmuting?

        3 0 Reply
        1. The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)
          Reply Icon

          Re: Our company has never had phones

          I've seen that countless times...

          But Skype still suck.

          1 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Expensive concerts...

    ... and outdated hardware+software.

    Performers should start to crash and burn hardware on stage... to get it replaced, eventually....

    2 1 Reply
    1. Kevin Johnston
      Reply Icon

      Re: Expensive concerts...

      Loooong time ago there was a motorcycle race in Finland where the facilities were 'basic' including a wooden 3-holer over a pit. All the racsers had been complaining to no avail and rumours are that various people had given up prize money to have it replaced which had failed to happen. Enter Barry Sheene with a can of fuel and a box of matches...

      8 0 Reply
      1. CAPS LOCK
        Reply Icon

        Let me commend to you...

        ...https://www.amazon.co.uk/Specialist-Charles-Sale/dp/0285632264/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+specialist+charles+sale&qid=1562054131&s=gateway&sr=8-1

        0 0 Reply
    2. Grikath
      Reply Icon

      Re: Expensive concerts...

      Maybe outdated in IT..

      But like any large, expensive piece of machinery, professional show gear tends to last a bit, and has no need to be on the bleeding edge of whatever is currently fashionable in IT.

      Quite a lot of it runs on embedded XP, because of the protocols/drivers equipment uses ( even more "outdated" than WinXp.. Whatever you use as OS/Driver quite often needs to be able to speak 16-bit...). It doesn't need more, it's heavy-duty specialised equipment, not the latest flavour of IoT..

      9 0 Reply
      1. doublelayer Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Expensive concerts...

        The latest IoT isn't usually on something modern either. Usually, your choices are some version of Linux grabbed by the devs at random before they started coding the app, a version of Android grabbed by the engineers from the "tried and tested" AKA "at least two versions behind" group before they started building the prototype, or a custom lightweight OS that they paid an arm and a leg for and never actually gets security updates, but as long as it's not running the grid people won't bother to try to hack.

        6 0 Reply
        1. Teiwaz
          Reply Icon

          Re: Expensive concerts...

          The latest IOT

          as long as it's not running the grid people won't bother to try to hack.

          If it's not 'on the grid' it hardly seems IOT, it sounds more like some practical embedded NOTIT

          (Not On The Internet Thing).

          Far too sane and practical for a modern device.

          1 0 Reply
  3. Ol'Peculier
    Pint

    Coverage

    Am left wondering why the Beeb decided to remix the coverage whilst the PC was rebooting?

    I'm also wondering why the techies didn't just unplug the projector, sort it out and then plug it back in again.

    Because they probably needed some - or already had ---->

    4 0 Reply
    1. FatGerman
      Reply Icon

      Re: Coverage

      It's running Windows XP, it probably won't boot without a screen attached.

      3 7 Reply
  4. Mage Silver badge

    Eh?

    I've heard of Glastonbury, that's the place that Monks invented an Arthurian grave so as to get the festival goers. So it's been updated.

    Never heard of Neneh Cherry.

    Why shouldn't they use XP to drive the projector if it's a stand-alone appliance? Like these people probably use Valve amplifiers too. Though I'd use Linux Mint rather than Win10. Seems to just work with external screens.

    I've an XP box to drive a valve curve tracer.

    7 6 Reply
    1. Conundrum1885
      Reply Icon

      Re: Eh?

      An upvote from me you have. (Yoda)

      "I've an XP box to drive a valve curve tracer."

      Nice to see that all the analogue folks haven't yet vanished.

      4 0 Reply
    2. 9Rune5
      Reply Icon

      Re: Eh?

      Even if its airgapped... All it takes is for one doofus to plug in a usb key with one or more pieces of interesting software tacked onto it.

      Then there's the question of using decade old hardware in what is less than an optimal environment. These things fail on the best of days. There are any number of fans, storage units and power supplies that all need to work flawlessly together.

      OTOH running a few lights and a video projector is hardly mission critical. It just looks a bit... what was the price of those tickets again? Is "rip-off" spelt with one or two hyphens?

      0 0 Reply
    3. Cuddles
      Reply Icon

      Re: Eh?

      "Why shouldn't they use XP to drive the projector if it's a stand-alone appliance?"

      While there are a variety of reasons that could be cited regarding best practice and so on, the most obvious reason they shouldn't is that it might crash in the middle of a performance. It's all very well to claim that an old OS can still do a perfectly good job in certain circumstances, but this article only exists because said OS demonstrably did not do a good job.

      2 0 Reply
  5. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Fire Alarms

    So how have they handled all their fire/intruder/etc., alarm lines? Did they just order a job lot of analogue exchange lines, or something cleverer? If so, what?

    1 0 Reply
    1. Vince
      Reply Icon

      Re: Fire Alarms

      Quite possibly either by keeping a few analogue lines, or possibly by just having GSM based options put in - pretty damn common now.

      2 0 Reply
    2. Lee D Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Fire Alarms

      You can do fire/intruder over anything - radio, IP, etc.

      You just have to pay a little more and get the certified module and put up with the false alarms if the network blips.

      0 0 Reply
      1. hplasm
        Reply Icon
        Meh

        Re: Fire Alarms

        "You just have to pay a little more and..."

        Whoa there...!!

        0 0 Reply

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

Forgotten password ?

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like