* Posts by A Non e-mouse

3264 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2010

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: I remember those days!!!

MS used to produce a book which detailed so much of the Registry. It made supporting Windows so much nicer.

Then the registry exploded in size, MS stopped telling everyone what could be done via the registry and...*sigh*. Good times.

It took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI safety

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Facepalm

"Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should "

Japan's lander wakes up, takes blurry snap of Moon

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Pint

The probe travelled quarter of a million miles, lost an engine yet soft landed only landed 55 meters away from the planned landing location.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Pointless if potless

QI claims that americans can't use electric kettles due to their voltage only being 110v

I have no idea how true this is. "Facts" on QI have to be treated with a pinch of salt (unlike tea which must never come into contact with salt)

Microsoft sheds some light on Russian email heist – and how to learn from Redmond's mistakes

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
FAIL

Something smells wrong here. Having no MFA on a test tenant is fine. But how on earth did a single app registration in the test tenant pivot to having enough permissions in the live tenant to manage app registrations.

JAXA releases photo of SLIM lander in lunar faceplant

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Pint

Re: Japan deserves a little more credit

Beers & Sake all round.

The rise and fall of the standard user interface

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Flame

Re: This far down in the comments

Wordperfect 5.2 for Windows was the pinacle of word processors. Since then it's been downhill.

Amid Broadcom's subscription push, VMware killed a SaaS product

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

PS

Back in the 80s or 90s (in the UK), there was a car parts supplier who were the sole supplier to a car manufacturer for one component. The manufacturer screwed the price right down until the supplier went bust. The liquidator knew the manufacturer's production line would stop withouth the part and and kept the supplier trading for a few months by raising the cost of the parts by a very large amount (something like trippling the cost) The car manufacturer went to court claiming the price rise was unfair and the court threw the case out. It took the car manufacturer several months to find another supplier for the part they needed. In the mean time, the manufacturer had to pay the higher cost until the new suppliers came online.

My search engine skills are failing me, so I can't provide a link to this. My suspicion is that Ford were the car manufacturer.

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: I'm wondering...

Broadcom clearly feel that most of VMWare's profits come from just a tiny fraction of their customers, so are laser-focused on those select customers and want to get shot of all the others as they're just "overhead".

As a supplier, I'd want as broader range of customers as possible. That way problems with one class of customer will have less of an impact on my business. But I'm just low-life techie and not the boss of a multi-billion/multi-national company so clearly I don't know what I'm talking about.

Japan recovers moon lander data, puts craft to sleep due to solar panels' bad attitude

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Any news of the little rovers the lander deployed?

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Flame

Re: It's still happening

You have seen the sample code? It's managers' fault for employing such shit developers.

It's also the senior managers fault for allowing the code to be deployed despite it failing so many internal tests.

I'm not trying to say developers are immune, but managers must be held accountable too.

How artists can poison their pics with deadly Nightshade to deter AI scrapers

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Let the AI wars begin!

You're assuming the current image recognition is perfect: When I drive past my local hospital, the sign reading cameras in my car think the speed limit is 100mph!

There are aleady examples where people have managed to slightly alter signs or their appearance to fool currrent image recognition systems. The war has already started.

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Education licence covers all schools and universities,

Just to clarify the MS storage calculation:

A tenant gets 100TB for free.

For every paid A3 or A5 license you get more storage quota. BUT, all the free licenses (Student, Alumni, A1) all count AGAINST your storage usage.

You can run an education Office 365 tenancy with no paid licenses, in which case you'll get just 100TB of storage for everything.

Microsoft 365's add-on avalanche is putting the squeeze on customers

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

The problem isn't just new features are paid-for add-ons: It's that MS are taking existing features out of products and putting them into paid add-ons.

Broadcom ditches VMware Cloud Service Providers

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Existing contracts

I now have a contract I can no longer fulfill.

Your lawyer should have inserted something like a force majeure clause in the contract. If they didn't, you need a new lawyer. If you didn't get a lawyer to review your contract...

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

If you're getting an EV, the biggest win is charging for cheap overnight (or from solar) If you can't charge cheaply at home I wouldn't recommend an EV.

Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Always keep in mind that any project you're working on could be cancelled tomorrow. So never overinvest. And if you have to work Overtime, keep it for short term deadline runs, and make sure you're rewarded for it.

If they've screwed up the project budget (cost or hours) so much that the project needs everyone to work 70 hours a week for a month, the chances of you getting paid for those crazy hours are slim.

Conversely, I heard of an engineer who pulled a 24-hour stint on a P1 problem for a very important customer. The next day, after the engineer had slept, he woke to be told that the managing director had ordered a box on not-cheap wine to be delivered to the engineer.

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Mushroom

My £0.02 worth of ideas:

1 - Lack of specification.

2 - Lack of consistent specification. I'm not saying specifications must never change (that would be unrealistic) but any change in spec will lead to an increase in time & costs. Too many changes will result in a system that's never finished.

3 - Unrealistic timelines. A politician may announce a launch date that suits them (think elections) rather than is practical.

4 - Unrealistic budgets/Value Engineering.

5 - Lack of trust. Public sector doesn't often trust its employees to know their subject area so employ far too many consultants.

6 - Outsourcing everything. Outsourcers have no interest in your line of work. All they're interested in is the fat pay cheque from you. They'll do enough to get paid which may not be enough to actually use the system.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Never, ever, keep an employee you can't trust. No matter how clever, knowledgeable or productive they are, your inability to trust them will hurt you far, far more than any temporary loss.

Quantum computing eggheads throw some other qubits at the wall to see what sticks

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Coat

Re: Really ?

They're just waiting for the fusion power module which is currently on back-order.

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: A gross understatement?

Boeing have abmitted it's their fault: bbc.co.uk/news/business-67930977

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: A gross understatement?

In this case 2 & 3 are moot as the aircraft was two months old and fresh from the factory.

Here's a list of thousands of artists Midjourney's AI is ripping off, creatives claim

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Meh

Re: Piles of styles

The ChatGPT type AIs that can regurgitate large pieces of existing works are clearly guilty of copyright infringement.

But creating something "in the style of": That's a much greyer area.

I predict the only winners will, unfortunately, be the lawyers.

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

This whole AI/Copyright saga reminds me of the early days of Napster.

X reverses course on headlines in article links, kinda

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Is It Even Worth That Much?

I mean, at this point what advertisers are there left?

I still lurk on Twatter as companies haven't moved their presence to other platforms (yet). But I'm starting to see ads of a dubious sexual nature in my feed. I'm also seeing more adverts in my feed too.

A ship carrying 800 tonnes of Li-Ion batteries caught fire. What could possibly go wrong?

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Mushroom

@katrinab, et al.

Disclaimer: I have an electic car with a home charger installed in my garage as do some of my relatives (some with solar and batteries). I think I can speak with a little bit of authority here...

First, you do not need a separate meter for your car charger. Some installers will wire the charger direct to your meter, others will wire it to your normal fuseboard. But in both cases, you're still using the same meter for your domestic supply and your EV charging. There is also a current sensor attached to the supply side of your meter to ensure your EV doesn't try and pull more than your main fuse is rated for.

Second, your charger does not need to be "smart" to load balance the grid. You can get very dumb chargers. Or you can get smart ones which talk to the grid and your supplier and allow you to charge only when there is less load on the grid - and hence a cheaper rate. (Or even charge when there is only an excess of green energy) Regardless of the rate you're paying the electric company, the tax you pay for your electricity is the same. There are people who have the large house batteries (think Tesla Powerwall) and charge them at night and run their hose from the battery during the day. (I'm not getting into solar as that makes things even more complex)

All home chargers (either 13A or 7kW) are slow. Using my 7kW charger I can only get 60% charge into my car during the off-peak tariff window. Sure, it's faster than a 13A socket, but many people do use 13A sockets. On some EV forums they encourage you to use the 13A charger option as it's less harsh on the battery than higher current charging.

If you're feeling very flush, you can get a three-phase electric supply and then get a 22kW home charger. But this gets expensive very quickly...

In summary: Beware of the FUD.

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Stop

Remember people: Don't feed the troll.

NAT, ATM, decentralized search – and other outrageous opinions from the 1990s

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Year End Reminiscing

In my experience, it's not the network that's the cause of poor performance but the end. user: Either their mic, speaker, camera or local environment (e.g. background noise, bad lighting, pets or little ones running into the room, etc)

Sure, if you have broadcast quality setups, you're going to be more aware of the poor quality of the network.

Postgres pioneer Michael Stonebraker promises to upend the database once more

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Pint

From the headline I thought it was another attempt at WinFS. Then reading the article I thought it might be a bit more liike etcd.

But reading their overview, they're talking about a microkernel to run the RDBMS and then the applications run on top of the RDBMS.

I find it an interesting concept for cloud-type workloads. I wish them the best of luck.

Icon: 'Cause it's the season.

Musk floats idea of boat mod for Cybertruck

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

And the motor(s)...?

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Mushroom

Protecting electrics from brief water spray isn't too hard.

Protecting an electric system working at approximately 1,000v and probably carrying a similiar magnitude of current, plus a shed load of lithium from water immersion is going to be a heck of a lot harder.

Icon for what happens when you get this wrong.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto stolen after Ledger code poisoned

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
FAIL

I remember the original aims of crypto currency was that they were decentralised and were not controlled by (evil) governments,

Yet, here we are and someone's account has been frozen and authorities have been informed.

I see the original aims are progressing well.

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

A Non e-mouse Silver badge
Unhappy

Oh how I wish they're replicate the unix shell tab-autocomplete method rather than the brain-damaged Windows way.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Pity the poor mobile phone providers. Since the rise of buying hardsets separate to airtime contracts and the drop in roaming fees, they've got to keep the trough filled up with cash somehow.

</sarcasm>

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Price rises

I'm an A&A customer and I've had both a price cut and a quota increase during my time with them.

Spanish media sues Meta for ignoring GDPR and harvesting data

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Mmmm.....

How dare they tarnish El Reg with this sciency mumbo-jumbo. Clearly they've never read BOFH, Moderatrix, etc. Definitely no science there!

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Mmmm.....

And they claim El Reg isn't biased and scores highly on factual accuracy: mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

There are two reasons why you never give someone a public roasting. First, it's just bad management. (It's a sign you're a bully). Two, If there is the slightest hint that your argument might have a flaw, you just look like an idiot.

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Ineptitude

Think of the children!

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: What a negativity

Everyone is different.. And different people have different jobs that have different requirements.

- The coders I manage only want virtual meetings so they can spend more time coding.

- Some of my staff have childcare or health complications that mean a regular presence in the office is hard for them.

- But I prefer in-person meetings as I find it easier to read people's body-language and maybe go for a coffee during or after the meeting.

None of us are wrong. We all have differrent needs.

The world is complicated and there are rarely (If ever) simple, universal solutions to problems.

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Managers

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

I'm (now) a manager but used to be an at-the-coal-face techie.

My job as a manager is to keep a-holes away from my staff and get them resources (budget, equipment, staff) to do their job. I have to understand IT systems to be able to make informed decisions about priorities, but it's not my job to dive in and fix them.

How to give Windows Hello the finger and login as someone on their stolen laptop

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: Finger prints all over the keyboard?

Just like the early facial recognition tech could be fooled just by a photograph. It's why Apple added the IR depth sensor to their iPhones to make facial recognition harder to defeat. (Note I said "harder" not "impossible")

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

I've not encountered those issues on my MacBooks with fingerprint readers.

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: fingerprint works <25% of time

Just to clarify: MacOS requries you to use the password after every reboot or and then every 14 days.

Will anybody save Linux on Itanium? Absolutely not

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Re: for well over ten years

There's a bit more to it than that. In one of Dave Curler's interviews on Dave's Garage channel he talks about Microsoft's internal arguements about the XP dervied 64-bit OS and the Sever 64-bit OS. (Spoler alert: The XP-dervied one was very unreliable and the server one took over)

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

It was niche. It was always niche

But the whole point was that it wasn't supposed to be niche: It was supposed to replace the x86. It ended up niche 'cause it failed. Miserably.

FAA stays grounded in reality as SpaceX preps for takeoff

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

Do they really know already all the fixes to the faults identified? (And be sure they can be implemented quickly?)