Posts by Wintermute 63 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009
Forget Linux. This stupid T2 chip won't even let you boot from an external drive created on other Mac computers. I have an up-to-date macOS external boot drive that works fine on all my non-T2'd Macs, but displays a circle with a diagonal cross "prohibited" when trying to boot from my new Mac Mini 2018. This is very very disappointing.
According to the help article titled "Your channel and Google+" here is the official word up to this minute:
"You'll soon be able to comment, upload, and create channels without Google+. The comments you make on YouTube will appear only on YouTube and not also on Google+ (and vice versa). Check out our blog post for more information and keep an eye on this article for updates."
If only there were a website on the Internet that would let you search for webpages. You could confirm what I posted here. If only.
No one is forced to buy iOS or Android apps. Life goes on quite well without them. If you do decide to buy an app, then it is your responsibility to learn how purchases work on your device.
Complaining to the EU is the equivalent of buying a car without first having learned how to drive. After you have reduced your new car to a smoking pile of rubble on the side of the road, you then blame the person who sold you the car for all your woes.
Are we not adults? Are we not responsible for our own actions?
Code does not rot. The only reason Microsoft XP is "obsolete" is that Microsoft is declaring it so.
Instead of killing it off, Microsoft could be selling maintenance service for the OS from here until the end of time. End users at home might not pony up the cash, but a lot of tired, overworked Sys Admins would gladly pay protection money so that they get all the latest patches.
It's a pity really. Without adding features, every code patch makes XP a little bit more stable. I would be interested to see where XP would be with another decade or two of patches.
Here is an idea Google: Why not give us each the option to pay 40 GBP/EUR/USD/whatever a year to use Google services without being molested? When we become the customers instead of the cattle, maybe Google's treatment of the little people would improve.
FYI, the day that I am forced to create a Google Plus profile to access GMail will be the day that I pick a new email provider.
About a third of YouTube goes dark in Germany because GEMA objects to the videos and Google slavishly agrees to all their demands. The scope of the material blocked is vast: Educational videos are blocked if a snippet of music can be detected in the background. Self-publishing artists are routinely blocked. Even big Internet sensations like Gangnam Style were blocked. The law in Germany needs to be changed. GEMA is a success but at a huge social cost to Germany.
Wow. 256GB of memory. That's awesome! I am going to hold Dell to this one if it's in their literature and not only a screwup on the part of El Reg. Yes, Dell must design me a new machine.
Incidentally, what is this 8GB of non-memory RAM used for? (Not that I care much. With 256GB of main memory, I can easily waste 8GB here and there.)
YouTube needs help with their content blocking. Yes, I've seen their TEDtalk about how wonderful it all is supposed to work, but experience suggests otherwise: For example, YouTube blocks Skrillex music videos in Germany, despite the fact that TheOfficialSkrillex account belongs to the musician himself.
The great thing about Steve Jobs was that he was willing to change his mind, unlike small-minded people who make a decision and then will ignore all contradictory evidence indefinitely thereafter.
If Apple comes out with a 7" tablet, this would be just like Steve would have done.
If Apple does not come out with a 7" tablet, this would also be just like Steve would have done.
"it uses various open-source libraries including libz for compression; it is spread out over several files rather than as one executable; and most unusually it uses a database managed by the SQLite library."
Well, I guess someone finally discovered a use for open source software.
The Americans seem unable to understand that Canada is not part of their country. Someone must have not gotten the memo that the War of 1812 ended with the British colonies north of the USA intact.
Canadian copyright and fair use laws are different from those in the U.S. They are not worse. In fact, in many cases they are more restrictive.
It seems that every time the Americans want to force a new round of stupidity on Canada, they begin by issuing one of these sham reports claiming that Canada is some rogue country with no regard for intellectual property or copyright law. It's up to Canadians to decide if they will listen to this stupidity or not.
If Gareth had not of already said it, I would. The doubling of price just to listen to it on an iPad vs a Mac is a big turn off.
I use my fondleslab much more than my Mac at home, the lack of non-premium access is pushing me in the opposite direction, toward dumping Spotify entirely. I only wish Spotify devs read The Reg.
As an expat, an avid YouTube user, and a resident of Germany, I can tell you that GEMA has already gone way too far. Sure, according to German law they are winning, but they are losing the hearts and minds of the people here.
It already seems that half of YouTube is blocked in Germany. I imagine that implementing this most recent victory will block even more.
I don't listen to commercial music on YouTube. I'm usually interested in random videos that involve people talking, but when there is even a short snippet of a song from one of GEMA's artists, the entire video is blocked.
I have bookmarked some of these banned videos and played them when visiting other more enlightened countries. Often, I cannot discern anything musical playing in the videos at all. This makes me think that Google's algorithms are already generating false positives matching GEMA content, blocking more of YouTube than is absolutely necessary.
I did not even know that GEMA existed until I tried to access YouTube in Germany, but I hate them with a passion now for how they have managed to mutilate YouTube into frustrating uselessness. If punishing German residents is their business model, then I hope that GEMA fails sooner rather than later.
If I were a German citizen, I would vote for the Pirate Party in any upcoming state or federal election to help put an end to this GEMA nonsense.
The big problem here is that there is no way to accurately measure browser usage everywhere. Although the reported number for IE went up marginally, my guess is that the uncertainty error bars out to 95% accuracy are really, really large.
The point is that a reported 1% change is actually swamped by the uncertainty in the figure they are reporting.
Unless you work in one of those small edge cases were SSDs actually make sense for how you use a computer, HDDs are still the way to go.
The MTBF issued by SSD makers might be really high, but my experience and those of others (see The Coding Horror blog, for example) would suggest that when SSDs fail, they fail hard. As in "you just lost everything" hard.
Despite what SSD makers would have you believe, it's still a nascent market and the long-term reliability of those SSDs are an unknown.
Go for it guina pigs. I will wait for the stats to roll in over time.
The three rules are good, but I would remove the word 'lawful' as it gives the U.S. Federal Government a veto on what can be sent over the Internet.
Yes, yes, I know that 'lawful' was probably stuck in there to placate U.S. media lobbies, but it could also allow for a future Chinese-inspired Great Wall of America.
Hey Andrew,
You put to words how I have been feeling all weekend since I learned that Google Desktop is being killed. There is no equivalent to this program, and the built-in search in Windows are brain dead compared to Google Desktop.
Can we petition Google to turn Google Desktop into a commercial product? Maybe if we all ofter to pay 50USD / 50GBP / 50EUR (depending on where we live), Google will decide to keep this "unprofitable" program in development.
Quite honestly, I was blown away by the quality of Google Desktop when it came out, and to this day I can't believe that Google has been giving it away for free.
/ Wm
Nothing, absolutely nothing searches Outlook mail quicker and easier than Google Desktop Search.
The workflow is:
1. CTRL CTRL
2. type in your search terms
3. hit ENTER
I read the blog announcement on Friday, and immediately downloaded one last no-longer-to-be-revised copy of Google Desktop.
Such an excellent piece of software. It will be sad to see it go.
The real story here is that Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) works: DigiNotar cannot be trusted and so those who maintain the mainstream browsers have removed it from the lists of trusted root certificates.
If there is any lesson to be learned here it would be to create a well-defined, repeatable revocation process for everyone to follow so that future cases can be handled with speed and ease, both of which are necessary for a breach like this.
@Semaj
Killing handles to open files?
You should REALLY try Process Explorer from Mark Russinovich, formerly of SysInternals and now part of the Borg proper.
Workflow:
1. Open Process Explorer
2. Press CTRL+F
3. Type in the name of the wayward file
4. TA DA! There's the program that's holding it (usually Adobe Acrobat Reader)
5. Kill the process and the file is deletable.
Honestly, is it that hard?
The real crimes are bankers pushing their private debts onto the government, then forcing the public to accept austerity measures to pay for them. All the supposed savings to benefits programmes won't add up to a thousandth of the money that could have been saved by letting bank fail.
Steve Wozniak made some clever microcomputer designs using the newly-available, cheap, IC components back in the 1970s, full of obscure little hacks and kludges to squeeze the last bit of power out of those low-count circuits.
So he made one design and it took off. The Apple II was one of the original Big Three of the 8-bit computer world. But here's my point: So what?
I'm sure that the Woz is a friendly and personable older technie, but everyone nowadays has some strange washed-up old uncle who still likes toying around with tech like he is still 15 years old. Steve Wozniak had his moment of brilliance three decades ago.
Paris is the icon here, because even Paris isn't dumb enough to try making another infamous video when she's fifty years old.
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