Oh please, if this thread were windows-related for some technical aspect where the user base was primarily Linux, the commentariat of El Reg would be falling over themselves to mock.
Posts by ArrZarr
1188 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2015
EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield V, Penguinistas respond by demanding crippling boycott
Dell slathers on factor XPS 13 to reveal new shiny with... ooh... a 0.1 inch bigger screen
We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...
Re: Now you know what 2020 is going to look like
Cultures where life changed sufficiently quickly that each decade could have a distinct identity. Just look at computers since the 50s along with a view on what a computer from that decade was like from a '90s child. At no other point in history has the rate of change been so great that each decade could be readily distinguished just by the tech you would see in people's houses.
50s - An analog world with only the daring looking at these new-fangled whajamacallems.
60s - An analog world with computers that are as small as a garage. Two computers occasionally talk to each other under laboratory conditions.
70s - Everything massively process driven is computerised: banks, ATC get their own software. It's very basic and would be polished to a mirror shine over the next 40 years. Computers have an opportunity to get chatty every now and then.
80s - Everything else starts taking a look at computers and realises that a computer that fits on a desk could make white-collar work so much better. Computers start getting chatty regularly.
90s - The internet starts. People get their own computers with this fancy new thing called a start menu.
00s - THE INTERNET really happens. The nerds have won.
10s - THE INTERNET gets populated by non-nerds and ruined by Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Everything is awful.
The above being said, the scary thing is that the rate of advancement is increasing. It's possible that in the next 20 years or so we will have to break decades in half because the world of 2030 will be so different from the world of 2035 that you can't pin the decade down to one area.
It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS
Welcome to On Call, the column in which the process is always followed, always professional and nothing ever goes wrong to highlight the flaws in the system.
That being said, I cannot agree with your sentiment enough and if I were in charge, I would keep a tank of Piranhas for offender's danglies to be dangled in, OSHA be damned.
El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail
Two missing digits? How about two missing employees in today's story of Y2K
Vivaldi opens up an exciting new front in the browser wars, seeks to get around blocking with cunning code
Re: A Ubiquitous Weapon for Mass Distraction and Destruction and Disruptive Creation?
I think it's more of a reference to how many tasks that used to be done in specific programs launched from the OS have migrated to web pages, web clients etc.
For most people, the OS is primarily a means of getting to the things you want the computer to actually do. Browsers are now doing very much the same thing for a hell of a lot of use-cases.
Unsurprisingly, there is an XKCD for this - https://xkcd.com/934/
I'm sure you & Jake can suggest actions that a browser cannot do, but speaking generally, I believe I'm correct.
Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures
Google security engineer says she was fired for daring to remind Googlers they do indeed have labor rights
iFixit surgeons dissect Apple's pricey Mac Pro: Industry standard sockets? Repair diagrams? Who are you and what have you done to Apple?
FUSE for macOS: Why a popular open source library became closed source and commercially licensed
WhatsApp chaps rapped for crap app group chat zap: Infosec bods find a way to nuke messages, fix issued
Re: Why?
Let's take Face-Off.
Scenery-chewing actor Nick Cage pretends to be Scenery-chewing actor John Travolta. Meanwhile, Scenery-chewing actor John Travolta pretends to be Scenery-chewing actor Nick Cage.
Directed by John Woo.
It's by no means a good film, but the scenery ends up looking like it's been attacked by a whole pack of wolves after their last meal was spiked with copious amounts of capsaicin and caffeine and it's so far from boring that it becomes enjoyable.
Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?
No box shifting, no Buck Rogers. Bezos-backed Blue Origin blasts off once again
I'm honestly curious as to which of the big three (BFS, SLS and New Glenn) will win in the end.
Blue Origin's pace feels glacial but that's also probably because they're flying under the radar the most. SpaceX (well, credit where credit is due - Musk) set insane target dates that are guaranteed to slip and SLS is stuck with the development hell of being an expensive NASA project.
Personally I'm hoping that SpaceX come out top on this generation of rocket but that's because the Dragon engine is way too awesome to be wasted.
Although having done some further reading, New Glenn is actually a Falcon heavy competitor by payload and reusability so what do I know?
Capita lights One Revenues and Benefits bug bonfire: ALL reports older than 12 months to be ignored
When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games
We strained our eyes with Lenovo's monster monitor: 43.4 inches for price of five 24" screens
Re: At that resolution, I dare you to get 144 Hz on a demanding game.
In my experience, 30, 60, 75fps and beyond is only noticeable if you are already used to the higher frame rate - I've made the decision that I'm going to stick with 60fps monitors for that reason - I can't go back to 30 but if I go up a step, I run the risk of not being able to go back to 60.
I accept that there are good reasons to go higher than 60 fps, but I'm lucky enough to not have to worry about them personally.
Re: Only 1200 high?
It partly helps with gaming, my main monitor at home is an ultrawide, but it helps more along the lines of being able to push more frames within the cable standard.
I know that if I use HDMI on my 3440x1440 screen, the standard of the HDMI port on the back of the monitor itself causes a cap of 50fps. The equivalent standard on full fat 4k is only capable of pushing 30fps.
Displayport 2's standard was published earlier this year which (I think) is intended to deal with 8k and 16k screens at varying framerates.
I'll take your frame to another dimension, pay close attention: This AI auto-generates 3D objects from 2D snaps
Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent
Whoooooa, this node is on fire! Forget Ceph, try the forgotten OpenStack storage release 'Crispy'
Based upon the rest of the working environment, I think we all know what the answer is.
Personally, this is why I'm trying to get out of an on call role - On a quiet day, it's a nice windfall for being on call, but when you have the bad days and just want to go home and cry yourself to sleep, you don't get to.
I recognise that's the reason for the big bucks but it just makes the bad days all the worse.
Google fell for a real Looker, but now Brit competition watchdog's probing data biz slurp
Re: Meh why bother....
2007 was very different to now. Google was unquestionably the dominant player in search already but its monetisation was well below that of today - Google shopping (Froogle at the time) was still little more than an afterthought and I believe that it was still a free service unlike today's PPC model.
In terms of the display ad game, Google was much less of a player back in 2007 as well. Buying doubleclick was their springboard into that space.
It's all very well saying that the doubleclick aquisition was obviously going to mess up competition but Display is still the paid search area that Google is weakest in and the most competition still exists. (I don't have stats to back that point up but search and shopping are both 90%+ so it would be hard for Google to be stronger in Display)
Vote rigging, election fixing, ballot stuffing: Just another day in the life of a Register reader
In Rust We Trust: Stob gets behind the latest language craze
Do...While
I have never encountered a suitable situation for the use of a Do/While loop - I've tried using it in the past and then had to fix it back to a regular while.
I ask the audience: Why would you ever use a Do/While? The standard While performs all the same requirements at the cost of one parameter check for the first iteration. It feels like such an obscure language feature that including it in the same sentence as for and while gives it vastly undue time under the spotlight!
/rant
You're drinking morning coffee in 2019. These eggheads are in 2119 landing drones on their arms like robo-falconers
Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost
Re: fucking incredible
While sooner is probably better, a number of planes falling out of the sky (and a signed 16-bit number in a counter) in recent times has highlighted the value of solid QA.
At this stage, HPE hasn't done much wrong (performing more validation on the supplier's part causing this mess could have brought this to light), but pushing out a firmware update that breaks people's RAID arrays will turn this situation from a problem to a disaster.
PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen
Re: not quite
A journalist for a newspaper is accountable to their editor who is in turn accountable to a chief editor who in turn is accountable to the owner who is in turn accountable to any shareholders.
One person won't have that many direct reports and will be able to pick up on anything illegal and can temper work that's close to the line. If the entire paper is dodgy, then it has a record in Companies house which includes the directors who are accountable to the law.
A forum has just enough moderators so that the most egregious excesses can be expunged.
For FB, Google, Twitter etc. they have so many users that moderation looks more like tidal defense than anything else.
Not standing on either side of the fence at this moment, just pointing out one of the main differences.
BOFH: Trying to go after IT's budget again?
That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman
Europe to straggle Japan, China, US and Korea in 5G adoption stakes
Yer a solicitor, 'arry! Indian uni takes cues from 'Potterverse' to teach students law
Ask, Allow or Block is like Vivaldi browser's version of Snog Marry Avoid for popups in 2.9
Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'
Re: Filling station power requirement
I'm not the downvoter, but my initial response was that considering needing large & centralised setups for EV charging doesn't necessarily make sense given the nature of how you get the "fuel" in.
Having a big tank of Petrol/Diesel is a dangerous thing. Far safer for everybody if you have a somewhat centralised system of tanks managed by people who know what they're doing then every Tom, Dick and Harry storing these at home.
Why have charging stations at centralised locations if you can charge your car overnight at home? That's not perfect for everybody, I am without a driveway at home myself and haven't gone electric for that reason, but if every home with a driveway is charging their car(s) at home, that significantly reduces requirement for petrol station style charging points.
Re: But...
According to this paper, and as stated in the article, this was tested and found to still be capable of holding 91.7% of the battery's full charge after 2,500 cycles. Assuming you charge once a workday on average, this comes out to over ten years worth of value from a single battery pack. The pack may be expensive but a decade of use is pretty good.
If you are draining the battery multiple times a day, I would suggest that burning dinosaurs is probably going to make your life a lot easier until we have magic future battery tech.
'Earworn Wearables' will save the day (wireless earbuds, but cool name for your D&D halfling)
Are you coming to the party dressed as an IMP? ARPANET @ 50
Re: Re IPv4
No argument there, The amount of legwork IPv4 has done in the past 40ish years is absurd and the reason that it's ended up insufficient for the present only serves to highlight the sheer scale of what the internet has become, which I assume was quite literally unimaginable back when the system was designed.
Part of me deeply regrets being too young (and in entirely the wrong place) to see what was going on in the world of computing at this time, the construction and design of these vast systems that were sufficiently well designed so that even today they're still working* despite the enormously higher scale and volume that was envisaged at the time.
It must have been an amazing place watching the future get built in front of your eyes, greybeards.
*IPv4 still did a damn good job
It's back: The mercifully normal-looking Moto 360 smartwatch
Plan to strip post-Brexit Brits of .EU domains now on hold: Registry waves white flag amid political madness
Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?
Re: Been there...
In defense of today's keyboards, their relative value compared to a half-decent computer has remained relatively stable. If your IBM-5152 costs £10k, then it's entirely justified to build a keyboard for £1k. The Model F was the cheap and tacky version of the beamspring with the Model M being the cheap and tacky version of the F.
I use a Unicomp M at home, and even with all the cost saving measures introduced to the keyboard over the last 20 years, it has more heft and solidity than most modern laptops.
Not so great for the office though, what with the deafening clack...
Edit: ISO modern Model Ms can be found here -> https://www.pckeyboard.com/