Posts by BillG

Re: Shakes Head

People aren't allowed to be prejudiced against one group of people but then expect to be able to claim prejudice when that group takes action against them.

No, you are wrong.

As the wise Dr. Martin Luthor King once said, "The means by which we strive must be consistent with the ends we seek".

This means that you can't preach tolerance, while practicing intolerance against those that oppose you.

Re: An e-mail client?

Another +1 for Notepad++ for free text editors. But if you want the best, shell out a few dollars and get UltraEdit.

Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

I have to say I'm amazed they are still a going concern considering how horrible RealPlayer was.

There used to be a Crapware rating website, and RealPlayer was awarded the #1 Crapware title. I remember RP as being horribly bloated, using up CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. When setting up new off-the-shelf computers I went out of my way to uninstall RP, then manually removing all traces of it from files and registry.

There were also serious issues with RP violating user's privacy. This is worth a read, for no other reason than to laugh at how oblivious RealNetwork's executives are:

https://www.grc.com/downloaders.htm

What RealNetworks has probably counting on is a new generation of young users that don't know just how horrible RP was/is.

Another reason I like to buy a phone outright with no Operator Branding. I'm in control, not them.

Another reason why I refuse to buy any phone I can't root.

Re: Worn out his welcome in New Zealand, has he?

I wonder how many other countries were 'tricked' or coerced into signing extradition deals which require no evidence to be disclosed before extradition.

To my knowledge, evidence is never required before extradition. All that is required is a valid extradition order.

To release evidence before extradition invites having an evidentiary hearing, then a pre-trial hearing, then a pre-trial in the country of residence before the real trial at the requesting country. This sort of continuous process can can clog up courts, cause never-ending delays, and bankrupt all but the most wealthy people from legal fees. it also introduces a loophole to prevent valid extraditions.

It constantly amazes me the dumb things people do using the company's email.

Someone or someones needs to get fired.

Microsoft seem to be edging towards a 100% totally soul-less money grabbing machine

Just like Apple & Google.

Re: Roll those eyes

the "fridge that can order you milk when it notices you are getting low".

This is the old "connected home" crap from the late 1990's that never happened. I was consulting for a semiconductor company back in the day when everyone - Motorola, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle - everyone was screaming about the Rise of the Connected Home. With scenarios like this:

Boss: Bob, what are you doing on your office computer?

Bob: I'm starting my dishwasher at home!

Boss: That's great thinking, I'm going to promote you

Bob: Now I'm flushing the upstairs toilet!

Me, I actually called the appliance manufacturers who were thrilled that someone wanted to know what they were doing. Every one of them told me no, we are not making refrigerators that can talk to the supermarket - if we thought they would sell, we would, but surveys show nobody wants them. They all thought it was funny that the "experts" predicting what connected home appliances would do never actually spoke to the people making home appliances.

I see IoT having success in Business-to-Business (B2B) applications, but outside of maybe personal fitness I don't see it having the gazillion dollars/pounds/yen of impact that pundits pretend it will have.

Re: Sad for those who died but...

Some companies also have a limit on upper management that can be on the same plane, usually no more than three.

Re: What about financial security/

or that Google won't suddenly decide that drive is non-core (I feel that this one is fairly low-risk :~) and will be deprecated next week?

Or that Google will buy your cloud services provider and suddenly your private data isn't private anymore...

You Trusting Fools

You are assuming that, with 450M users to exploit Zuck cares at all about TOS. Zuck laughs at privacy statements with the intensity of Mike Meyer's Doctor Evil.

At this point, regardless of anything, if you are using WhatsApp you should consider your privacy already violated.

Re: You don't get nuffin' fer nuffin' dese days...

A 'blackmail notice' that you would consider paying - because why exactly?

The blackmail is that, if you don't pay up, they crap all over your credit rating. They do it by exploiting a loophole in the credit reporting systems in the US and UK in that if you have access to modify credit scores, you don't need to prove a business relationship to damage someone's credit rating!

Re: Sysadmin motto number # 94

Ignore any problem long enough and it will go away

Actually, you are paraphrasing Snoopy - "No problem is too big that it can't be run away from".

My 'knowledge' of the CIA is limited to what you see in the movies but I thought they weren't allowed to operate in the USA itself. Won't they get into trouble for that?

No, when Obama reaffirmed the Patriot Act the second time he also approved the CIA operating inside the US, just as the Secret Service can now operate outside the US.

When it comes to civil rights in the past six years, all Americans are frogs, being slowly cooked, slowly cooked...

Re: Don't like the bill?

The Barack Obama administration has filed a civil lawsuit against US wireless operator Sprint, alleging that the carrier intentionally overcharged law enforcement agencies for services related to American government wiretapping programs.

PLEASE El Reg, you *really* need an icon for irony!!!

Re: Hmm...

...FUD merchants to the fore it looks like to me. Never let the facts get in the way of PR, hey MS?

As in "At Google, we value your privacy"???

...El Reg, you REALLY need an icon for irony.

Re: Hmm...

The "Vagina Rod Dancers" would be a great name for a rock group.

Re: How was the ticket even upheld once??

This is California, the state that loves to tell people what NOT to do.

Re: Symantec and McAfee (among others) have not responded

Judging by how much they hook into your system and how impossible they are to remove, I always thought Symantec's products ARE malware,..

Re: Log analysis

Gmail is the NSA's best friend.

Re: Risk

Isn't the "solution without a problem", as you put it, to not continuously shovel shit into our atmosphere?

CO2 isn't shit. It's needed for plants to survive and is balanced by the world's oceans. And alongside advanced irrigation techniques it's one reason why agriculture is thriving today.

Do you want to take the risk that the planet hasn't adapted to increased CO2 by growing more plants to process it? Do you want to take the risk that dramatically reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere might result in massive crop failures and global famine? Or are you incapable of doing that math?

Or are you Dilbert's pointy-haired boss whose motto is "anything I don't understand must be easy"?

Re: It's the reviews, not the tech, that matters

Reviewers almost never have a critical word to say about products - for fear that tomorrow's mailbag won't contain any more swag

That's not the entire story. Reviewers almost never have a critical word to say about products because if the product actually does become the next wonder hit, they can also brag to all of creation that they predicted it.

What I was told is that it's almost impossible to predict what will be the next big hit, because the people that control the room-fulls of money needed to fund these companies will admit that they themselves don't even know why Facebook and Twitter are so popular.

The basic business model this that, you can get bought out if one of two things are true:

a) Get lots of people to register for your service, or

b) Get lots of journalists or bloggers to say it's cool.

The Underwear Gnomes will be getting funding any day now...

Re: Typically ignorant management response

"SCADA systems have not been patched in years for various reasons: isolation of SCADA networks making the process of patching awkward; lack of motivation to perform what is sometimes seen as a risky process to a critical plant component; terms of software support contracts".

Or, as a business mentor told me early in my career, "nobody gets promoted for preventing 'screwing-up'. Nobody gets promoted for taking preventative actions"

Re: (“Fair” has never been a verb.)

Consulting Shakespeare on grammar is like consulting Wikipedia on science.

+1 for that

How???

The question is, How did this happen? I've worked as a vendor for Ford and they have an extensive six-month QA test program for all new technologies. What is described here would never had passed Ford's QA testing - unless there was a "deal" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Bob's your uncle) between MS and Ford's upper management.

Re: Number Crunch Saga

Something I see all the time as an analyst

"After these workforce adjustments we are focusing on market1, market2, and market3"

We laid off people in these three markets because we put no R&D in them. We hope to throw you off the track by pretending these three gashing head wounds are really healthy.

Re: What the hell did they expect?

If MS bothered to ask consumers this would have never happened

When Bill Gates was in charge of development, Microsoft's marketing mantra was

Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.

They seemed to have forgotten the last part.

Re: It should be blocked by the anti-trust authorities

And just like the AT&T - T-Mobile deal, this will results in thousands of people losing their jobs.

Another parallel - T-Mobile has outstanding customer service while AT&T's sucks.

Comcast has terrific customer service while Time-Warner's is absolutely horrible.

Re: The problem with their spectrum was twofold

All in all the basic concept was flawed.

I agree. And yet they still managed to get funding. There's a lesson here somewhere.

Re: Overly aggressive throttling?

I have to say that when I had Comcast as my ISP, I was constantly having trouble streaming YouTube videos. It was a constant race to see if the playing point would catch up with the buffer and frequently it did.

When I switched to AT&T, YouTube played flawlessly and streaming problems stopped.

Re: My Documents

because, to Microsoft, the idea of separating your OS and data partitions is an unknown concept

That's why, on all my Windows computers whether XP, 7, or even 2000, I have the C: drive for the OS and programs, and I partitioned a D: drive for data only.

Computer is faster, defragging makes sense, and nasty software doesn't know where to find my data files. Migrating to a new computer is a breeze.

Re: Must have been those $50,000 a day

Dave Chapelle described what it was like when he went from obscurity to having $20M in the bank. The analogy he used was when Elmer Fudd would look at Bugs Bunny and all he would see was a side of meat. Dave described people he thought were friends as cold, demeaning, and demanding. He was rich and constantly under personal assault when he suddenly couldn't take it anymore and ran away to Africa.

Money doesn't change you, it changes the people around you.

Re: android upgrade debate

Past polls have consistently shown a large number of devices running Android 2.3 "Gingerbread," a comparatively ancient version that debuted in late 2010. But these days such devices only make up 20 per cent of the total.

I don't understand the use of the word "only" here. 20% is a large percentage of a customer base, GB is #2 to JB's #1 and dwarfs ICS and KK combined.

Part of the problem is actually the manufacturers. For example, LG has refused to allow carriers to upgrade many of its phones off GB, or even supply drivers.

Re: Ain't nothing going to change

BillG has been firmly in charge all along

I politely disagree (I have to). If you put MS bias aside, it wasn't until BillG stepped down from the day-to-day responsibilities of managing Microsoft that the company started losing it's grip on what their customer base wanted. It was BillG that decided to integrate IE into Windows because after he abandoned his initial skepticism with the internet, he realized that the browser was the most important app in any computer.

Re: I sympathize with the attackers message,

I haven't updated Angry Birds on my phone in over a year and I have it blocked from network access by DroidWall.

Meanwhile I've been told that recent versions of the app won't work if you block network access.