* Posts by Blitterbug

558 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2010

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Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB in a PC

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: I was gonna say...

The point is, it's a Pro. Field engineers often run offline copies of a live DB on pro-grade lappies, Apple or otherwise. This is not about 'only 8GB', it's about 'only 8GB on a Pro.'

Nvidia faces lawsuit for melting RTX 4090 cables as AMD has a laugh

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Do wot?

So when Americans accidentally zap themselves to death by touching the pins while inserting a mains plug, we should... sue the govmt? Disclaimer: I live in the UK where this can't happen, but it doesn't make the US system inherently bad. You overstress a heavy-duty power rail in any system, it's gonna cause issues, and until these keyed plastic molex-style plugs remain standard in PCs and while GPU power demand spirals ever upward I do't see how you can stop stupidity. Yes I said it.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Blitterbug
Meh

Far more secure...

...and far less happy

Bill Gates says NFTs '100% based on greater fool theory' amid crypto cataclysm

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: NFTs explained (again)

Shares are fungible

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

Blitterbug
Meh

...only a few hundred GB

I've two SMB1 8 year-old 4TB NAS boxes, both 80% full, so...

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Bright little apples?

Try telling that to my missus - even at LOWEST brightness on my iPad Mini in the Kindle app, she grunts & grumbles over the light spill to the point I have to read under the bleedin' covers like a ten year old!

There's something to be said for delayed gratification when Windows 11 is this full of bugs

Blitterbug
Meh

Linux is nice 'n all, but...

...not for the punters. My business is supporting home & businesses who are already on the Win platform, and by and large, it's a fine experience. If Linux ran the stuff most people wanted, I'd almost be tempted, given MS's shenanigans, but we're not there yet.

Blitterbug
Thumb Down

Bad for Ryzen

Had to wipe a customer's new HP Ryzen Win 11 box back to the metal after it started BSoD'd endlessly, even during attempts to factory reset. I have *never* seen this behaviour on any new machine and as a result, I now don't believe the only Ryzen issues are the slowdown that was reported due to off-balanced cores.

Reason 3,995 to hold off on that Windows 11 upgrade: Iffy performance on AMD silicon

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Good to see

Why don't you add your development folder(s) to Defender's exclusion list?

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

Blitterbug
Unhappy

Re: bah, humbug, and it's the 60s, not the 70s.

How dare you, sir? I don't drink alcohol and feel shamed, diminished, disenfranchised and otherwise hurt and offended. Bah, humbug.

'Windows Vista' spotted doing a whoopsie over EE's signage

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Not actually Vista?

Call me Mr Pedantic (no, please, I like it) but that ain't Vista on that screen. It's Windows 7. Many internal designators in 7 still have the 'Vista' monika, yes, but look at the Start Button. Sorry, that's a Windows 7 orb in all it's fancy glory. The Vista bubble protrudes over the top of the taskbar by about a 5th. Do I win something? Some more meds would be cool.

Yahoo! customers! wake! up! to! borked! email! (Yes! people! still! actually! use! it!)

Blitterbug
Happy

BT also affected

Yes, we all laugh at Yahoo! users, but my phone's been off the hook all morning from BT email clients, most of whom are unaware their mail is still linked to Yahoo!, and all of whom have a btinternet.com address.

Sky customers moan: Our broadband hubs are bricking it

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Sky Broadband FAQ

Heh. I keep my Sky box OFF my damned network. Against T&C but fuck em.

Surface Studio 2: The Vulture rakes a talon over Microsoft's latest box of desktop delight

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: Hmmmmm!

Are you a Windows software engineer? I'm guessing not. Have you, like me, tested this on both 32 AND 64 bit? I'm guessing not. I said Windows 10 degrades *gracefully* - I never said it degrades well, or performs well. But it does perform, and MS appear to have made it deliberately scalable for deployment on headless systems such as PoS terminals etc (yes, haha I know what you'll say to that...)

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Hmmmmm!

Nope. Win 10 gracefully scales down to 1GB with no problems, disabling more and more system services as it goes. Don't get me wrong - I despise the bloat, and install classicshell on all my clients' machines, and switch background apps to off, etc etc - but the engineer in me is delighted by the under-the-bonnet work put in by the busy bees working at the coalface. Luckily, the monetization of Windows and the (largely cosmetic) bloat has no impact when installing on low-RAM devices.

Amazon Mime: We train (badly) an AI love bot using divorce bombshell Bezos' alleged sexts to his new girlfriend

Blitterbug
Happy

A Man From Mars Bot?

Do you suppose AMFM is actually writing cogently, but outputs everything through his own Markov chain implementation for entertainment reasons...

Ever wonder why those Apple iPhone updates take so damn long?

Blitterbug
Facepalm

I say "Well done Apple."

Wow. Well, that's two minutes I won't get back. And your limited understanding of file system formatting is - well - interesting. Not to mention your apparent disregard for peoples' data put at risk by this masterful piece of hubris on Apple's part.

What should password managers not do? Leak your passwords? What a great idea, LastPass

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Still way better than no password manager and reusing human rememberable passwords...

Just... no.

Crack in black: Matte iPhones losing paint at alarming rate, gripe fans

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: How many of you do this sort of weekly maintenance??

Erm - anyone who cares about their device.

Samsung battery factory bursts into flame in touching Note 7 tribute

Blitterbug

Re: give us an icon for irony!

I agree - closest we have is facepalm. Close but no cigar.

How Google.org stole the Christmas Spirit

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: What a waste

The engineer in me wants very badly to agree with you. But the prosaic interpretation is that schools are simply after cheap web portals, and Chromebooks are just that.

Twas the week before Xmas ... not a creature was stirring – except Microsoft admitting its Windows 10 upgrade pop-up went 'too far'

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: Win7 is a fix of Vista

So? Firstly, referencing the popular opinion of Vista as a failure is a disingenuous appeal to the masses. Secondly, Vista was clearly the harbinger of good things to come. Yes, it was initially badly broken. Yes, after two service packs it was still stodgy. But a fully patched Vista install contains the Win 7 driver model and much else from Win 7, and is pretty solid. Vista / Win 7 sharing the same DNA is a bad thing only in your worldview.

And what is wrong with Aero? Do you even know what Aero is? It is *not* solely the transparency effect that everyone supposes. It is a fundamental move to modelling the 2D traditional desktop using 3D GPU power, instead of using old, slow raster blitters, and is still very much fundamentally part of the Win 8 and 10 GUI.

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Microsoft has been getting it wrong with user interfaces

Well, Windows 7 was bang on the money and has long taken over from XP as the 'gold standard'. In fact, the only two features from later versions that would make it better are Fast Start and Explorer's up-arrow (go to parent directory),

Spotty battery life costs Apple's MacBook Pro its gold-star rating

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: a full re-index of the hard drive on the next boot

I think Apple engineers are bright enough to include reason codes in their event logs. Re-indexing due to a simple low battery condition would be dumber than a box of frogs. All laptops safely shut down when power is critically low to avoid borking the lithium cells. Well, dunno about Apple but Windows will force an emergency hibernation state when power < 2%, so when the tester fires it back up, no disk errors should have occurred.

This just sounds like poor battery management.

Stupid law of the week: South Carolina wants anti-porno chips in PCs that cost $20 to disable

Blitterbug
Unhappy

No chance

This has about as much chance of becoming law as a barmy, racist business tycoon has of being elected president. Oh...

Oi, Apple fanbois. Your beloved Jesus Phones are pisspoor for disabled users

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: complaining ... rather than picking something suitable in the first place

What if the user likes the Apple ecosystem, use a Mac and have spent years tailoring their feature set and the way they get everyday things done between desktop and phone? Are they supposed to stop complaining and break their workflow by buying outside their favourite ecosystem which otherwise does everything they need? Bit harsh, don't you think?

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: socially incontinent commenters

And you started off sounding so reasonable. Do ad-hominem attacks often help promulgate one's point of view? Not usually. You seem to be upset by any outrage leveled at Apple. Why so upset? Clearly there is a major usability gap here, and there is simply no denying it. I agree you didn't say 'Apple is Da Shitz so there', but you are very defensive toward them. I personally regard the lack of voice call and answer as an non-negotiable dealbreaker, and for the article author this is clearly the case.

I have worked in the disability tech field since the early eighties and am reasonably familiar with user requirements across many different disabilities. Most companies use disabled testers during usability testing including Microsoft. Why laud Apple in this way? If they got it wrong on such a major usability feature, why be so defensive? I don't understand.

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: I find it hard to believe this feature could possibly be missing due merely to oversight

So... sheer bloody-mindedness, then?

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: Have you seen how you set up an Apple iPad?

This. I don't turn away business but when I get callouts to help 'rescue' iPads that 'helpful' family members have mis-configured for elderly relatives, I always groan. As long as Find My Phone isn't set up, no problem - I can do a factory reset with the button hold combo whilst connected to iTunes, but when I see the dreaded 'Please enter the password for the user abc....@icloud.com' it's usually game over and I tell the unhappy owner that they need to get the full login details from the family member who set it up. I then have to leave, unpaid (no fix no fee). I have literally had customers telling me it was set up by a relative who lives in Australia so they could Face Time them. And can they get these login details? No.

Windows 10 backlash: Which? demands compo for forced upgrades

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: "could of had"

Oh Jesus...

Florida Man's prized jeep cremated by exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7

Blitterbug

Re: Unusual dog

Isn't that Merkin for Guide Dog?

Pains us to run an Apple article without the words 'fined', 'guilty' or 'on fire' in it, but here we are

Blitterbug
Thumb Up

Re: environment nose

I for one welcome an all-digital solution for this.

Windows 10 pain: Reg man has 75 per cent upgrade failure rate

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: FBee Acronis could be the culprit

In my experience over the past year, the best route for 'difficult' systems was invariably:

1. Back up user data.

2. Install W7 + SP1 / W8.1 from scratch (or factory reset).

3. Visit MS main page and choose 'I want this POS called W10'.

4. Re-instate user data.

Side note: Freshly-reset W7 machines need at the least IE 11 or Chrome / FF. All academic now I guess, thankfully! But these tips will still work for the paid upgrade I reckon.

Bloke flogs $40 B&W printer on Craigslist, gets $12,000 legal bill

Blitterbug
Thumb Up

Re: There is nothing in that state worth saving

But But... Kurt Vonnegut? (were he still with us, I mean). And he set most of his distopian whimsies there iirc. Or was he being, er, ironic? I'm guessing the latter?

Surface Book nightmare: Microsoft won't fix 'Sleep of Death' bug

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: Seriously. Just shut it down properly. What's the problem?

Hardly a constructive comment. What the article isn't making clear is that some surface tablets (mine included) can enter the Sleep of Death state when powered off. I have to use the emergency two-button reset to start my Surface Pro daily, after a full power-down. This only happens if the machine is off for more than a couple of hours, so in my mind it's clearly related. And I have given up looking for solutions. There are none.

Adobe scrambles to untangle itself from QuickTime after Apple throws it over a cliff

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: That would suggest you haven't been using Windows long enough :)

Touché - had to smile at that.

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: beige beancounter boxes with the horridly dysfuntional operating system

...wow. Just... wow

In my professional life as a Windows support engineer who runs his own business, I am often asked my opinion about whether to get a Mac, and I try to answer in as balanced a way as possible - eg, I often say yes for various use cases. What I never do is start frothing at the mouth in pointless fury.

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: what the hell Windows is working at so furiously while idling?

Slightly unfair comparison. In my experience a genuinely 'clean' install of Windows is pretty rare - it normally runs a buttload of 3rd-party crud which is what kills the CPU and fan. I should know; I spend my life fixing overheating turd-infested hardware (and no, not by installing Mint, though the gag is always appreciated).

Also, some internal Windows services are hideously sluggish and will kill your superfast gaming rig. Best example: Unless you access a hotmail.com or outlook.com account from within Outlook (any version) then you can safely disable the Windows Search service and notice an instant, massive decrease in fan noise. This service is useless to anyone who knows which folders they have put their stuff in.

You can also safely ditch the following: the two Homegroup services (seriously - who the hell uses Homegroup - and why?) and the Skype update service. Actually, you can rip out nearly any update service other than Google's and Windows' own.

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: Today, this morning, KB2952664 and KB3035583 magically unhid themselves

Latest version of GWX Control Panel ought to do the trick. Haven't seen the GWX malware punch through it yet, though the author is sadly deferential to MS in his phraseology (both on his blog and in the language and choices available in the utility). I understand that as he has a relationship with MS (or with their staff) he doesn't want to burn his bridges, but when our best hope for barring this arrant filth is an MS-associated developer, we're really on planet la-la.

Disclaimer: WinX ain't so bad with ClassicShell. It's the GWX malware I really hate with a burning passion.

Stagefright flaw still a nightmare: '850 million' Androids face hijack risk

Blitterbug
Coat

click-to-play won't protect against trojan smut!

But I'm guessing the unspoken elephant in the room is that some of us might be using our phones / tablets to surf for free tuggables. And there is a veritable Aladdin's cave of dodgy MP4s out there, and anyone who wants to get their thang on is not going to be shielded by a click-to-play protection. Because no play == no funsies.

Icon because, ahem.

Mystery Kindle update will block readers from books after Wednesday

Blitterbug
Black Helicopters

Re: Bookerly, etc?

All good points. As long as they don't 'vanish' any of my sideloads I'm still cool with it though... I think.

Blitterbug
Happy

Bookerly, etc?

Surely this will be the long-awaited firmware update that brings Bookerly to 1st-gen Paperwhites? The article makes it sound sinister, but this update is long overdue so I'm guessing this is what it is. All my Kindle apps have Bookerly now so it would be great to finally get it on my Paperwhite.

Discalimer: I'm normally the guy sporting the tin-foil hat in the corner.

'Adobe Creative Cloud update ate my backup!'

Blitterbug
Thumb Up

Re: crown of excrement

Ah, le mot juste....

Nvidia GPUs give smut viewed incognito a second coming

Blitterbug
Happy

The nVidia Tug Bug

Can I be the first to name it? Oh, go on...

Upset Microsoft stashes hard drive encryption keys in OneDrive cloud?

Blitterbug
Meh

Re: Only Microsoft employees down vote this comment!

Wow. And I didn't even know I worked for Microsoft.

Cache-astrophic: Why Valve's Steam store spewed players' private profiles to strangers

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Now I concede that Windows is the better system for gaming

This changed my reflexive DV into an UV! Balanced and makes sense. I loves me Windows 7, and I've long said the X-Windows bottleneck can be problematic on Linux & Unix (may be out of date here tbh) but I like the ease of getting up'n'running with Mac software and configuring printers & such, so...

What did we learn today? Microsoft has patented the slider bar

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: What kind of stuff are you doing?

Can't speak for the other guy, but on my clean Surface, LibreOffice (which I love) has a sluggish UI and laggy loading speed - just generally feels clunky.

As I said, I love it but if you want to DV an honest observation based on opening and manipulating the same docs in Word 2010 to test compatibility, go fer it!

Aroused Lycra-clad cyclist prompts Manchester cop dragnet

Blitterbug
Angel

Nips?

I'd only point out that nips aren't exactly genitalia. A more appropriate comparison would be with women proudly displaying their camel toe?

Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers

Blitterbug
Facepalm

Re: it doesn't bother iWatch owners if their charging matt doesn't charge Samsung phones...

Way to miss the point! It's about the fact that you can't buy a generic Qi charger for your iWatch, and are instead forced to front up for the dubious pleasure of the £80 white teaplate.

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

Blitterbug
Happy

Re: Change it to a noise that doesn't sound like a text message...

Or, you could, I dunno, swipe your finger down from the top of the screen near the left and actually read the notification list? Just an idea.

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