Posts by Dave K

You win, it was a 32K BBC Micro when I was little, although we had a floppy disk drive, so I could feel smug when seeing how long it took my friend's Spectrum to load things from cassette!

Re: Forcing us to the Cloud 'Solution' and Subscription Hell?

Yep! I have an old NAS I liberated from the bin at work which I use for backup purposes. Maximum drive size it takes is only 1.5TB (four slots) and write speed is pretty crap due to the age of the thing (roughly 10MB/s maximum - despite having a 1Gb Ethernet connection). Thing is, that's still nearly 10 times my broadband upload speed (roughly 1MB/s), so although syncing 100GB to it takes a few hours, it would take *days* if I were to try and sync an amount like that online.

Re: 128MB USB? Did they stole them from a time capsule or what?

Have you not seen the price that rare antiques can fetch these days?

Re: Ooh, fun!

You mean #barnardcastle

Re: The interface formerly known as....

I see the point, but this doesn't excuse the flatness. Back in the 90s, IRIX (SGIs version of Unix) used vector graphics for all the icons, you could scale them to be as large or as small as you wanted without any impact on quality, yet everything still had a pleasant (for the time) 3D look to it. You can make nice looking vector graphics that scale properly on larger/smaller screens - if you can be bothered with the effort. Problem is that MS have gone for the blandest, most minimal design possible and it looks dreary as a result.

Could not agree more.

Although W10 has numerous issues such as the updates, telemetry etc, the primary reason I don't like it is because the UI is a complete and utter mess.

There's a complete lack of consistency due to "modern" bits and "classic" bits all mis-mashed together, plus the modern bits look flat, bland and utterly lifeless. With Windows 7, the interface looked pretty polished and it looked as if designers actually cared how it looked and how functional it was. You don't get that feeling with Windows 10, there's no "wow" factor at all, it just looks shit to be completely frank.

Agreed, I quite liked that one. I'm also fond of Microsoft (not responding) due to how many times bloody Outlook does that with me.

Re: All I want to know is ...

I also hate how every UI update seems to introduce more and more white space everywhere. Alongside my main work laptop, I have an older customer laptop which only has a crappy 1366x768 display. Originally it was manageable, but lately Outlook is almost unusable on it due to the ever increasing bumpf and spacing all over the place. And the thing is, it isn't as if there's a single bit of useful additional functionality I've noticed, it's just a constant stream of pointless dicking about with the user interface, with each update steadily making things worse.

Re: Amazed it took them this long

Not saying there isn't still a market for 32bit Windows, this is about MS discontinuing the OEM "pre-installed" Win10 32bit images. Retail/volume license versions still continue, so no issues with using Win10 32bit on an older machine, VM etc.

Actually, you'd be surprised. The O2 was a bit of an oddity, but it did have a unique "universal memory" architecture for the time. The graphics weren't the most powerful, but it could do pretty cool things by using videos in system RAM as textures in a model by simply passing the pointer (as the memory was shared between graphics and system).

Unfortunately it was mis-sold by some SGI sales reps as a replacement for the older and far more graphically beefy Indigo2, this did hurt SGI's reputation a bit when some customers found the graphics performance of their new systems to be poorer than their old ones.

At my place, contractors are more expensive than employees and for the work we do, we have a mixture of about 60% employees to 40% contractors. Why do we have contractors if they cost us more? Flexibility. Workload and demand are constantly changing, and contractors are far easier to source and release than employees are.

Re: Dual Screen Woes

This! Although I love multiple screens, apps frequently open on the wrong screen, if I close an Excel sheet on screen number 3, a different spreadsheet steals focus on screen 2 (why?). Custom screen scaling also causes problems for multi-monitor setups (use a custom value and it must be applied to all screens). Hence, plenty MS could do first to improve regular W10 for this.

Saying that, improving W10 and fixing its various faults has never been a priority for MS anyway, so I'm not surprised here.

It does for me, Teams has been pretty solid and reliable, whereas with SFB I've had customer calls I couldn't join due to "network issues", randomly being kicked out of calls, breaking/crackling audio, flaky screen sharing, and that's before we go into the awful "fisher-price" user interface. Teams on the other hand has been pretty solid for me so far!

Re: Most bands are in it for the money

Yep! It's also why albums from a lot of the larger bands actually sound pretty crap from a quality perspective. There's no love or desire to create something that sounds good (so long as it sells well, that's all that matters). Both Metallica and the Chillis have been guilty of releasing some of the worst mastered albums I've ever listened to over the past 20 years or so.

I have a Ducky Shine 2 mechanical keyboard with Cherry Brown switches. As I work from home, it is used both for personal use/gaming as well as for work during the day (connected into a KVM so I can switch it over to my laptop dock for work).

Personally I find it excellent for working on and I can type very quickly and accurately with it. The only issue at all is that you have to mute yourself if you're on a conference call and need to type anything otherwise there will be complaints from other people on the call about the loud clatter of keys.

Re: Give a child the information in the wrong order.

> And is there a way we can do something like that […]

And the answer, to anyone with even a quarter of a brain cell is "NO".

The problem here is that Trump has these thoughts and instead of discussing it privately with medical experts who would quickly point out why this is dangerous, pointless, completely doomed to failure and why it hasn't been mentioned before, he goes and rambles it out in a press conference - forcing numerous medical professionals and bleach manufacturers to have to fire out statements telling everyone not to ingest/inject toxic chemicals.

That's the problem with Trump. He opens his gob in front of the TV cameras without engaging his brain or discussing his thoughts first with those who know better. This is dangerous stuff and can risk lives. Well, the lives of stupid people who might actually be tempted to try something daft like this anyway.

There's nothing particularly wrong with having wacky ideas, but there is a lot wrong without fact-checking them before you shout your gob off on TV.

Re: If my trusty Pale Moon fails me...

Same here, Pale Moon for 95% of stuff, Vivaldi on the occasions where a site breaks in Pale Moon, or where it just runs like crap with a none-Chromium engine (ie, Google Maps). Also got an extension for Pale Moon that allows it to send a site direct to Vivaldi if required.

Re: "but you'll want to trade yours in now" is, in my mind, complete marketing bullshit

Doesn't bother me personally. But like you say, it depends what you do with it. Would I use it for online banking or for work? Definitely not. However idle web browsing via a 3rd party (and hence still updated) web browser, a bit of Facebook/WhatsApp, playing the odd game or MP3 when I'm travelling? Of course.

My current phone is an old LG G4. That's no longer supported either, yet I don't really care. I don't use it for anything particularly private or important. Should it become infected with malware (which is unlikely as I'm careful with what I use it for), I'd use that as the excuse to replace it.

Re: Er ...

I agree, but the fact that this new firmware is supposedly being rolled out silently and without choice isn't good. I have a pair of Sony's finest and although the app on my phone nags when new firmware is available, it is entirely up to me whether I install it. Generally I don't bother unless it adds some new functionality that I think may be useful, plus only when the new firmware has been out for a bit without any stories of problems/issues.

Re: Precisely

Excellent point. In fact the Thalidomide scandal helped to introduce a lot of the current testing and regulation of drugs and is an excellent case in point of what can happen if poorly tested and understood drugs are taken en-mass.

Thalidomide is still a widely used drug today, but now that the side effects and risks are properly understood, we know where we can prescribe it safely and when we can't.

Re: Understated..

Almost any tree can be a loo-roll tree, assuming you have your own portable paper mill :)

Re: One-nation Barmy

So contractors don't also have bills, mortgages, families to support etc?

In times of Coronavirus and the uncertainty of work, contractors are in a far more perilous position than employees as contractors have no legal protections for the work they do and can be easily let go at a moments notice.

Also, it's worth noting that IR35 targets contractors doing pretty standard work, ie IT support, delivery drivers and whatnot. Those doing specialised consultancy work on short-term contracts often fall outside of IR35 scope.

And just to note, I say all this as a full time employee myself - I'm not a contractor.

Re: "Or heard the sphincter-loosening words: 'What's a backup?' "

Oh, been there before with this!

Had a user a few years back, his laptop was playing up so one of my team offered to re-image it for him. He backed up the user profile to an external drive, quickly checked the root of drive C for any other folders that looked none-standard, then ran one of our build sticks to re-image the laptop before transferring the guy's profile back and handing him the laptop.

10 minutes later, the guy returns: "Where's all my data?". Turned out the guy had created an incredibly vague folder on the root of drive C (something like C:\inf) and was storing all his files there, my engineer had missed it due to the vagueness of the folder name. We asked him if he had a backup "nope", and asked if he'd installed CrashPlan (the provided backup tool we have) "also a nope".

I explained his files were toast, only for him to suggest a specialised data recovery firm - adding "when the hard drive failed on my previous laptop, they managed to get the data back". My jaw dropped at this point. He'd almost lost everything only a couple of years earlier and STILL hadn't implemented backups.

Sure I re-iterated to all engineers the importance of double checking with all users in future to ensure we'd retrieved their old data before re-imaging. However when it comes to protecting data, some people are simply unbelievable beyond words...

Re: I liked the butterfly keyboard..

Hmm, I understand where you are coming from, however as someone who owns an X201 and an X1 Carbon with the chiclet keyboard, I still much prefer the "classic" keyboard. Don't get me wrong, the newer chiclet one is still one of the best laptop keyboards out there, but the classic one was a triumph of function over style. It's a pity these days that "stylish" but poor functionality is now the norm.

Re: Is this as ususal software related?

Yep, that's the solution. I've seen this with CNC machines controlled by Win95 and WinXP consoles. The machines cost a fortune and still work fine, so much cheaper to heavily firewall the controller PCs than replace the CNC machines.

My wife also has a Win XP machine in her university research lab. It's not networked and is there to run an old but expensive 3D motion tracking system. Of course, if she had £60k laying around she might replace it, but as long as it isn't networked then it is fine and still ticks along nicely.

Of course when you're running 2,000 XP laptops then you're likely to have bigger problems than the odd firewalled or standalone system controlling an expensive and critical bit of hardware...

Living in Aberdeen, deep-fried Mars bars are common. Especially as it was invented in Stonehaven which is just down the road.

Thing is, they're actually pretty damn tasty. Have to admit to having a couple myself over the years - although mainly when visiting Stonehaven with guests (always nice to buy one from the original source of the craze).

Re: It's called "leveraged buyiut"...

Its also a similar thing that helped kill Maplin. Multiple changes of ownership - many of which placed the financial burdon for the change back onto Maplin, meaning that eventually the costs of servicing the debt - combined with a drop in sales were enough to push the company under.

Not saying Maplin would have survived forever, but having a massive debt on your shoulders both saps your profits with interest payments, and makes the threat of insolvency uncomfortably close if the company struggles at all...

Agreed, I'm calling that as bullshit. Sure, the corporate image may need to be updated to tweak drivers, but that's about it. I contract at a major international company, and we had some budget AMD Dell desktops in our portfolio a few years back. No problem at all!

Re: Good

I have no problem with flagging it up. That's fine. The problems are firstly that it is a global override (enable for one site and the shaming stops), and that they will soon remove altogether. It should be overridden by site. Plus when they remove it altogether it will cause problems for accessing old, internal systems that use these older encryption methods and which cannot feasibly be updated. Really looking forward to using an outdated portable browser for those said pretty much no admin ever...

Re: HOWTO Move Your Server

That's not a nail, its just a special fuse with a 200A rating...

Its the pricing but that is the issue. If there were flexible subscriptions that cost roughly the same over a 10 year period as a standalone Office license, not much of an issue. However if you have (say) 2 computers in your house, the costs are miles higher than they used to be for a couple of standalone licenses. Same with Adobe products as well (not just picking on MS here). I dont have a problem with a limited support limit that is well known when I buy a product, but at least I can use it beyond this time (albeit at my own risk). With subscriptions, stop paying and the software goes away completely, and as long as you do pay you're paying much more once you add it up.

Hence why companies love subscriptions!

Re: licence

Well obviously you'd expect El Reg to post basic, factual articles with no hint of slang, comment or other such colourful language popped in. I mean, they never use puns, cultural references, fake accents or anything else in headlines. Do they now...

Re: exfiltrating so many different types of data

I was thinking the same thing. Install genuine versions and you'll still find your bank account steadily drained and all your data slurped...