Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Alternatively ...

"Which begs the question: does anyone know of a company that has supplied a phone to an employee they said "has" to be on Whasapp (etc) but who doesn't own a phone."

Yeah, me! I've never owned a personal mobile phone and still don't. I've been in jobs where a company mobile phone was provided since the "brick" phones where finally going away, replaced with little black Nokias. Current employer has WhatsApp groups for remote teams to keep in easy touch for general chat, work-related etc that's neither company sensitive nor of interest outside of the team. It's lighter, easier and less hassle than Teams (which we also use for "official" company business)

So, ignoring all the bugs until a concatenation turns them into an exploit is ok by you? If the first bug had been fixed, the exploit would not have happened in the first place. Ignoring the bugs until some combination becomes exploitable is security by obscurity. The black hats might find the exploit first, and use it first.

Re: LibreOffice is not as good as MS Office

I never have issues saving my LO Calc files to Excel format and sending them to others. I frequently have issues with people using the many whizz-bang "features" of Excel, "Just Because They Can" which add nothing to either the data or the presentation, but make importing it into LO Calc a problem.

On the other hand, that's the same problem Word and Excel have had with previous versions of Word and Excel for many years. Not everyone can or will upgrade to the latest shiny as soon as it's released.

Re: preaching the gospel

I would say it mainly depends on whether there is software available to do what you need to do on your OS. Not so very long ago, it was normal to choose a computer based on exactly that criteria because there were so many different hardware architectures and OS to choose from. The Wintel monopoly has reduced choice in that respect but, to some extent, increased choice in what you applications you run on your OS so long as you choose Windows running on X86 hardware.

In my personal case, I can run everything *I* want or need to run at home on FreeBSD. That limits me from doing some stuff that might be nice to do, but I don't miss that stuff. Likewise, I can also all my work related stuff on FreeBSD because the few "custom" work apps are all web based and work nicely for me without issue, including vendor training courses I need to do.

In the past, there were some Atari ST based things I would have quite liked to use, but chose the Amiga, which to my ST owning friends did things their STs couldn't do. but we were all happy with our choice.

(Well, *I* was happy, they were stuck with crappy Ataris STs LOL)

Re: Life imitating art

Bring back silver mini-skirts!!!

Re: Just speculation but ...

"a cloud of orbital hypervelocity buckshot "

Depends on the orbital difference. The velocity of the debris cloud is relative to the potential target, not absolute or relative to some "at rest" spot on Earth.

Re: ...and 32-bit SPARC boxes

...or AROS :-)

(I'd link Amiga OS 4.1, but you have to buy that, not open source)

Re: Remember when

Would you even need all that for a town runabout in, say, Wales with a blanket 20mph speed limit? Maybe there's a market for "geofenced" little cheap eco runabouts there :-)

Re: to have electric windows and electrically moving seats without needing any chips.

Also, in the past, pre-chippery based controls, you had to press or pull the button constantly while it was moving. The sound of the child screaming would act as a signal to release the button and stop the window moving :-)

Modern electric windows generally keep moving on the chosen direction if you push or pull the button for more than a second or so and so need some kind of feedback mechanism so as not to cut off a childs arm or head.

Re: Here's an idea -

"Linux car, only has a CLI."

Linux car. Comes with a range of controls and layouts that can be changed as the mood suits you for no additional cost. FTFY :-)

Re: Here's an idea -

Especially since it will likely be Android or similar controlled and you'll have to say "Hello Google" or "Hello (name of manufacturer)" to get it's attention. Then there's all the times I'm listening to audio books or Radio 4 or other speech based programs and it triggers the damned car speech recognition. Luckily, my car only has a small amount of voice control which has a steering wheel button to trigger and doesn't actually do anything I can't do quicker with a manual control anyway, so I never use it :-) But I can imagine current or future cars being all voice and/or touch screen only.

Re: Why did Burger King send me this blank receipt whilst i was sleeping at 5am?

"Because you were stupid enough to give your email address to a company with which the only relation you need to have is to tell them what kind of burger you want, and wait for them to deliver said culinary treat."

After two+ years of various lockdowns/shelter-at-home orders, many of these takeaway "food" outlets probably have a huge database of home addresses now too as people ordered home deliveries, linked to the email addresses.

Re: Romaine calm

Seems more like a lack dillagence rather than a surf'n'turfeit

Like the Forest mentioned above, they only mentioned a few days after the announcement that they wanted the private sector to pay the £2B, fat chance.

You mean this scheme? Or is this a watered down version of the one you are referring too?

Especially when you can announce a huge budget for it, never actually spend it, then change the slogan and announce the same budget for it again and pretend it "new" money. Rinse and repeat 'till the budget seems astronomical.

Re: Pariahs

"£35k pa, which coincidentally is the same amount one of my friends make as a cleaner"

That sounds rather a lot for cleaning job. I'd have to guess it's not a the person who comes around at night and empties the office bins and hoovers the floor. Or is that poverty level wages for central London office cleaners?

Re: Big problem with limited solutions

Agreed, it's a massive and almost certainly insurmountable problem to clear it all. But unlike the chaotic flows of the oceans, orbital debris is much more predictable in many cases.

Re: Ukraine anyone?

If you think eastern cultures are not exactly the same in your terms, then you need to do a bit more research.

At the very least, your "western supremacists" and "war between Hitlers" includes Japan. Hardly a "western" culture.

Re: Ukraine anyone?

"Why do you think Russia started it's operation against Ukraine? They knew the supremacists were in weak position mainly boasting and showing-off to reassure themselves."

What kind of "supremacists" are you talking about? Nazis? White Supremacists? The Jewish Cabal?

Do you really think a "Nazi" or "white supremacist" state or government would allow a Jew to be President without arranging an "accident". I think you've been drinking Putins Kool-Aid.

Re: CHINA IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY...

"Russia needs to come out of this crippled, vulnerable, afraid of its neighbors."

That was the intention of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. That didn't lead to the intended result.

Re: CHINA IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY...

" just as you deny voting for...Hitler if you are German."

I wonder what the population of over 99's is in Germany? And of those, how many voted for Hitler?

1933 -79 years ago. Voting age, 20.

Ah, I see there are about 20,000 centenarians in Germany out of a current population of 83m or so.

Hitlers party got about 43% of the vote in 1933, so potentially there are about 8600 people still alive who may have voted for Hitler, not taking demographics into account, eg women tend to live longer than men, which may sway that number up or down, depending on if Hitler was more or less popular with women.

Whatever, it's a tiny number and I doubt any read here, so "you" is a bit vague in your accusation on that point.

Re: Airlines have been doing this for years...

I've had boxed products where the outer brown cardboard box is labelled "company name, Taiwan R.O.C", Republic of China.

Re: Gigafactory?

I must admit, that term gigafactory bugs me too. Just how big is a Tesla "gigafactory" compared to a run of the mill car factory? Does it cover more space? Is it more vertically integrated with more on-site manufacturing? Or is it just a new "cool" name for an assembly plant with no actual manufacturing capability?

Re: Yeah right

To be fair, that's a choice in taste, not levels of survival after eating it :-)

Where?

Re: New car

On mine, it's just a snowflake icon, comes on at +4C, which is reasonable as there will, likely be colder areas down the dips, in hollows etc. and only happens either when turning on the ignition or if the temperature drops to 4C while driving. The icon remains lit but the beep is a one off per ignition cycle.

Re: Click!

"up to and including yanking the power cord."

Is it information overload or have they been trained by the helldesk default "Have you tried turning it off and on again"?