* Posts by quartzie

118 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jan 2008

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Microsoft 365 Copilot 'generally available' – if you can afford 300 seats

quartzie

Not all roses for SMBs

Having had first-hand experience with this, I can vouch that most SMBs do not want to dedicate their IT time to deploy Copilot on M365 in a safe and sensible manner.

It is far more involved, requires re-thinking your data storage, labeling and correct permission setup to work as intended - and ONLY as intended.

On top of that, Copilot is still very much under development and it's hard to rely on in anything business-critical.

AMD undercuts Nvidia's 4060 launch with a $269 GPU

quartzie

Product Crippled at birth

I have always found these artificially crippled GPUs with cut-down memory bus insulting to both customer and the chip itself.

The performance is going to suffer a lot - a 7900XT has max 800GB/s bandwidth (2900 GB/s effective), the 7600 only sports up to 288GB/s (effective 476,9 GB/s).

8GB of VRAM is going to be the least of the GPU's problems.

Cisco kindly reveals proof of concept attacks for flaws in rival Netgear's kit

quartzie

Default password?

In this day and time, allowing users to keep the default password on any online device is borderline criminally negligent design.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

quartzie

Actual EU benefit

It has long been a standing recommendation when visiting east asian countries to buy a local burner SIM card instead, which gets vastly better pricing than whatever roaming service you choose.

EU-roaming price ceiling has been one of the (few?) tangible benefits of EU regulations, which limited the price gouging when travelling within the 27 states.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

quartzie

Re: Possibly a sensible solution

There are at least two issues with geosynchronous satellites you mentioned.

1. They're out of reach of regular cell phones (4G/5G)

2. The delay involved precludes them from being used for phone service (120ms one-way due to orbital altitude 36000km)

I'm not saying that starlink-on-a-plane IS the solution, but geosynchronous satellites are most certainly not.

JP Morgan must face suit from Ray-Ban maker after crooks drained $272m from accounts

quartzie

Luxottica payback

Considering how much money the Luxottica monopoly takes in from just about anyone needing glasses in the western world, it feels just a tiny bit like payback.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

quartzie

Re: Customer pushback

Even at our big Corp where the on-site tech guy is actually from the service provider, these are considered sundry expenses and available immediately upon request.

One way Bitcoin miners can make money: Selling electricity back to Texas

quartzie

bitcoin madness

It is insane that individuals (or manpower-thin) operations are allowed to use up so much of the energy, without providing virtually any benefit to the local population. Not to mention the dubious value of Bitcoin itself, which is driven simply by speculation junkies which crave anything "in short supply".

All the green talk gets thrown out of the window for the profit of a few maniacs (bitbarns have absolutely minimal workforce, producing virtually no jobs locally, while bringing up power prices).

But they sure can talk up their "good will" in reducing their power usage when needed (and while being paid to do so).

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

quartzie

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

Most Slavic languages adopted weekend without any translation:

Víkend, Vikend, uïk-end, weekend, vikhidni, vykhadnyja.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

quartzie

Re: "three leading systems" WTF?

Beware outsourced remote drivers.

Imagine how well a left-driving remote gnome is going to do in right-driving locations.

Microsoft updates Edge's Internet Explorer mode

quartzie

Sharepoint mapping

One special quirk I used IE for was authenticating a sharepoint mounted in Windows Explorer.

Without IE, the only remaining option will be to sync, which is an issue on sharepoint folders with deep folder hierarchies.

12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...

quartzie

my 12 year old...

self feels a bit overwhelmed at the memory.

I did learn to tweak Autoexec.bat and Config.sys (+ dismantle and eventually reinstall Win 3.11) at that age, but I probably still preferred playing Wacky Wheels at that age. It may have been the year I learned about TurboPascal, though.

Can't imagine contributing any code whatsoever to a project like that as a 7th grader.

God of War: How do you improve on perfection? You port it to PC, obviously

quartzie

Pick up the Horizon port again

I've had a ton of fun with the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn, and i can confirm the patched version is really a masterpiece.

Compared to that, i was at times underwhelmed by GoW on PC, especially water could use some transparency.

Both are great stories, though, and well worth playing.

Smart things are so dumb because they take after their makers. Let's fix that

quartzie

Re: What are error messages for?

The remote control in the above post is simply called "Junior" ;)

On the other hand, said remote control is rather expensive to keep, and its reliability can become questionable during the 10-15th year of use.

Mature networking vendor seeks flexible commitment from software suitors

quartzie

Swapping nightmare...

As flogging Cisco wares is part of my daily bread and butter, I'm only worried what switching contract commits would entail in our SAP.

At the same time, customers with over $100k in licensing fees alone are not going to be switching very often... if at all. There tends to be a good amount of "if it works, don't touch it" reticence, unless the CFO is "woke" and has a bone to pick with the CIO.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

quartzie

Crypto Currency impact coolly ignored

It seems to me that in all this green push, they willfully ignore the growing impact of crypto currencies and the newest bitchain abomination - NFT.

Since the tech industry considers Crypto "cool", it doesn't matter that it consumes enormous amounts of power for 0 real value.

OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting

quartzie

Re: This is very low-rent

Having first hand experience with smoke-besotted paraphernalia from a house that *didn't* burn down, I wouldn't power up anything that had been covered with the stuff for more than disaster recovery.

Insurance providers know why they won't cover that stuff any more.

Sadly, the catastrophic impact with Apophis asteroid isn't going to happen in 2068

quartzie

Hats off to the astroboffins

While I understand that they need to produce headlines to justify their ever more expensive toys, I'm still amazed that the astroboffins can actually track a lump of crud flying around in space with such accuracy.

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

quartzie
Headmaster

won't someone think of spelling?

At the risk of sounding overly pedantic, the Taiwanese semicon mill is called TSMC, not TCMS.

How do you save an ailing sales pitch? Just burn down the client's office with their own whiteboard

quartzie

Taiwan Experience

According to my experience, not necessarily.

Most 110V plugs are of the [ | | ] type, or grounded [ | . | ]

I residential buildings, the 220V plugs are for AC's mostly and are keyed [ | . - ], but in legacy engineer shops, you'll often see just RED versions of the 110V [ | | ] socket, which is somewhat disconcerting ;-)

We'll get you later: SAP CEO promises help for customers in 'financial distress'

quartzie

Re: Expanding their share of the wallet

The market has long come up with a solution to that problem - print more money.

That said, I just love how all our corp systems have to bend over backwards just to get the next PO accepted by our SAP without too much bloodshed.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

quartzie

Re: HP

I would strongly suggest to refrain from using glossy paper in your Laserjet. It's designed to work with wet ink, not dry powder toner and certainly not made to withstand the baking process required for Laser Toner.

You might find that the lifetime of your printer has suddenly become much, much shorter.

The state of OpenPGP key servers: Kristian, can you renew my certificate? A month later: Kristian? Ten days later: Too late, it’s expired

quartzie

Re: Abdul Abulbul Amir

Obviously, the afghan internet would have been screwed.af

Windows fails to reach the Finnish line as Helsinki signage pleads for help

quartzie
Facepalm

incompetent lot

Now if only there was a way to manage a fleet of windows computers and their updates, or perhaps use a suitable edition fit for commercial deployments.

Gone in 9 seconds: Virgin Orbit's maiden rocket flight went perfectly until it didn't

quartzie

Re: Nerdy but interesting...

Also why the venerable 747 was cheerfully used to flight-test many other jet engines.

Note that while GE's huge GE9X engine for was mounted on the regular wing, while Rolls-Royce borged an alien winglet onto the hump of a Qantas Jumbo.

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

quartzie

Nice Specs: 2 modular (weapon) bays...., -25 to +45°C in Singapore?!?

Now there's a properly creepy critter. 2 modular (read weapon) bays tickle my fancy, but only operates up to 45°C - I guess Boston Dynamics reps have not been to Singapore yet?

The ultimate 4-wheel-drive: How ESA's keeping XMM-Newton alive after 20 years and beyond

quartzie
Go

EPA needs better marketing

Honestly, this is the first time I remember hearing or reading about a European "Hubble-style" observatory living this long. Obviously, the Americans have better marketing chops.

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

quartzie

reimbursement required

You, sir, owe me a clean keyboard.

/*there goes my morning coffee while lazily reading through TheReg.

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

quartzie

Re: Compelling, isn't it?

With the amount of v̶o̶l̶u̶n̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g meaningless spying, I'm bound to start looking for alternatives.

Are iSheep any better off?

What does it take for an OpenAI bot to best Dota 2 heroes? 128,000 CPU cores, 256 Nvidia GPUs

quartzie
Mushroom

Re: How many orders of magnitude

yet strangely, some people seem determined to play it out...

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

quartzie

oooof.

I don't consider 4 pints anywhere near "binge drinking", but 20 pints is more than enough for an extended weekend drinking party for me.

Am I getting old at not-quite-40?

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

quartzie

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

I beg to differ.

If your airline is cheap enough to cram seats into non-reclining spacing, then it's a madness, but reclining seats are most certainly NOT designed to work only on half-full flights.

I'm 6"2", and will look for extra leg room seats where available, but I will recline, especially on a 10-12 hour flight, since I want to be in working condition at my destination.

In cramped short hauls, it's a matter of consideration, especially in local Asian island hoppers, but on long hauls and red-eyes I'll recline to keep sane. Fortunately, in my experience, these flights have generally been amenable to reclining.

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

quartzie

Only function I need in Office

So far, I've not wanted for a single extra office function, save for effin' Outlook to support UTF-8 CSV import/export, just the way Excel does.

I imagine this will be missing from Office 2019 as well.

Perv raided college girls' online accounts for nude snaps – by cracking their security questions

quartzie

Re: Everytime I see "Mother's maiden name" on the list of security question...

Ay, there's the rub.

These questions are a stupid "solution" to a practical problem - Passwords, and their (often moronic) implementation.

Case in point: My reasonably computer-literate parents already struggle with the idea of keeping separate complex passwords for every account they use - and they use far fewer than I do. Remembering said passwords is a lost cause.

I'm trying to get them used to the idea of a password manager, but they are more likely to use pen and paper, so the complexity of the password is going to suffer.

Want to bet how many people don't really have anyone with at least rudimentary understanding of computer security they could ask for advice?

GitHub shrugs off drone maker DJI's crypto key DMCA takedown effort

quartzie

Re: Any idea?

Because in some countries, the geofences are set up so rigidly it is virtually impossible to fly even in your garden.

Fortunately not the case in most of Europe, but DJI's geofencing has been known to fork up people's toys.

That, and because idiots want close ups of flying jetliners.

Yes, your old iPhone is slowing down: iOS hits brakes on CPUs as batteries wear out

quartzie
Boffin

Re: Economy

@John Savard: As a business oriented person, I found a fly in your soup, corrected below.

"They should be trying to make a product which can be sold at the HIGHEST ACCEPTABLE price, to benefit the maximum number of consumers."

Businesses are striving for profit, not just volume. High manufacturing volume @ near-zero margin can cover your production expenses, but not generate profit - see almost all current Android manufacturers for reference.

Almost all the profit in mobile phone market is generated by Apple, even though they do not have a dominant market share.

quartzie

Re: Every week, something different

I had the same problem with an old Sony Z2 - it just wouldn't stop working well.

I wanted to upgrade to get some new features, but with reasonable maintenance the thing just wouldn't die - or underperform. Until one day the battery gave up ghost, ballooned and took waterproofing away - a downpour on the very same day proved deadly to the compass & IMU.

Took three years of fine performance and a freak coincidence to cripple the phone, otherwise another battery would have been good for another year, at least.

Hey, you know why it's called the iPhone X? When you see Apple's repair bill, your response will be X-rated

quartzie
Paris Hilton

cracked screen fetish

i never quite understood the fetish about cracked iPhone screens. Even with the high replacement cost, there are just too many such sheePhones around.

My S7 lives in a thin silicon bumper case and a glass sticker on the screen. I've had to replace the sticker a few times, but the screen remains spotless. Just why is iPhone equipped with a screen *designed* to be broken?

Mind boggles...

Microsoft, IBM, Intel refuse to hand over family jewels to China

quartzie

Marketing Fail

The Chinamen should have offered "Complimentary Release Candidate Safety Testing"

Apple drops dongle prices to make USB-C upgrade affordable

quartzie

USB-C Compatibility

USB-C is in fact fairly compatible with previous standards, but also incorporates high power transmission option, which can be potentially dangerous over low quality cables. Unfortunately, the original standard doesn't sufficiently check cable quality and specs, creating a potential fire hazard

Researchers crack Oz Govt medical data in 'easy' attack with PCs

quartzie
Facepalm

Homework assignment

Did they just tell curious and smart people what NOT to do?

That should work...

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

quartzie

Re: millions of years

I believe that information may not require such a huge storage density, and could be easily carved in a chunk of reasonably durable material nearby.

Prior art: Voyager's golden LP.

Would YOU start a fire? TRAPPED in a new-build server farm

quartzie

Re: stern words warranted

Handy as these things are, they probably rely on the missing cell signal...

Wouldn't have been much help in this case.

Inside Electric Mountain: Britain's biggest rechargeable battery

quartzie

Us kettles

The breakers might go up to 20A, but finding a kettle over 1600W is a miracle.

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

quartzie

Unfinished but necessary

Windows 7 was a success, but it was aging and that showed in the cracks.

The old windowing system and rendering were completely useless on HiDPI screens, and many hardware enhancements were only possible by generally hacking drivers onto an aged kernel.

Windows 8 brought a lot of necessary new guts, with an unfortunate interface.

From what I can see on my Surface, Win 10 is basically an evolution of that, with many things I used to dislike in Win 8 resolved.

My pet peeve is probably about the forced updates, which I hate on both Windows and Android.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

quartzie
Facepalm

too predictable

whenever US politicians have wanted to push a security related (and mostly illegal) agenda, they've defaulted to two "unbeatable" arguments.

POTUS Obama just proved my point: bla bla bla bla pedophiles blabla bla bla bla terrorists blabla....

Behold our SPINNING DATA GRAVE: WD carts out 6.3TB cold storage drive

quartzie

Re: Short warranty for Archive drive?

Unfortunately, that number is only the theoretical Mean Time Between Failures. Although it may sound confidently optimistic, WD castrated the idea by offering a paltry 3 year warranty on your archive drives.

Surely they must have another business case for this model?

Doom, Mario, Pac-Man level up to video gaming's Hall of Fame

quartzie

am I the one-man cheering section for Prince of Persia?

As for impactful games, I wouldn't throw out Max Payne's Bullet Time.

Sane people, I BEG you: Stop the software defined moronocalypse

quartzie

Re: As my father-in-law always said

There is a basic problem with the definition of driving in your response.

Technically speaking, you can sit in a car and make it move without ever going through driving school, but actually *driving* a car means you take into account road rules, traffic around you and general safety.

With those included in "driving", then no, it isn't easier to do when drunk.

Unlock and start General Motors cars with a $100 box of tricks – hacker

quartzie

Man in the replay....

Rather than a man in the middle, I'd classify the approach as a drive-by replay attack.

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