* Posts by janimal

338 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2007

Page:

UK.gov snaps on rubber gloves, prepares for mandatory porn checks

janimal

Re: Was this not a piece of the legislation first proposed by the Dark Lord Mandlescum?

Just FYI: Claire Perry is the fucking idiot you are referring to.

I wrote to her multiple times to point out that if you tell parents that the internet is safe for kids because you've "removed" child access to pornography you'll just increase the amount of kids being given unfettered access to the internet and the predators, blackmailers etc...

Telling parents the internet is safe for kids is a danger to kids.

janimal
Childcatcher

Re: but...

They don't need it to work. this is just to appease parents, who will think it works.

janimal

Re: and so ..

Except politically they don't actually need it to work, they only need to be seen to be doing something. The majority of Mumsnet users probably won't realise this is completely ineffective and allow their kids to roam free video chatting to strangers & being groomed by paedophiles.

The internet doesn't need pics or video to be a danger to kids - ideas are enough FFS. The internet will never, ever be a place for unsupervised child access simply because it allows strangers to communicate with children.

janimal
Facepalm

There are British porn sites?

There are UK based porn sites? Who knew?

This basically amounts to

"we're going to spend a shit tonne of money implementing our new digital sieve defence shield."

When will they realise that the danger to kids on the internet is not seeing porn, but in fact being able to communicate unsupervised with total strangers, by mail, txt, video etc.. That thing you were always told not to do as children?

The internet will never be safe for children to be unsupervised on the net even if you removed all images.

Also kids will continue to send naked selfies & film their friends, whatsapp, instagram.

What is dangerous though is declaring it porn free & safe for kids. Because that will never be true.

Microsoft raises pistol, pulls the trigger on Windows 7, 8 updates for new Intel, AMD chips

janimal

Re: Windows 10 Creators Update CU (NT) system.

Indeed, Belgium managed without a government for several years & nobody really noticed.

janimal

Same Here

I was just mulling over updating my ageing system (Phenom x6) even though it is actually running fine. but I might as well wait as well now.

I have managed to switch pretty much everything I do to linux now. Most computers in our house are now running Mint.

I have a few games I like to play on PC (flight sims, project cars, assetto corsa, skyrim, GTAV) but I can go back to (non MS) consoles for games if Microsoft are going to insist. I have been buying some linux games from Steam as well.

I really think MS execs would be truly shocked at the level of hatred Microsoft engenders in ordinary users let alone those of us who have had to work with (or around) their products and watched their shameless, offensive, marketing shenanigans.

Alert: Using a web ad blocker may identify you – to advertisers

janimal
Big Brother

Only by resolution

I did some tests using my usual web browsing configuration: VM, never logged-in to mail or social, over vpn. Running an ad-blocker with some sites white-listed & no script.

I visited multiple times from different IP addresses. First I changed nothing but IP address (and cleared browser history in between)

attempt 1) unique

2) 2

3) 3

So each consecutive visit from different IPs reduced my uniqueness. Then I did what I normally do which is arbitrarily modify the resolution of the VM. All consequent visits I was unique, but differentiated only by resolution.

For all visits, including the 1st three I was in a non-standard resolution.

So my fonts are the default installed with Mint, I have ad-block & no-script & flash - for those I was 1 of 2-3 thousand. Only my ever changing resolution identified me, which only works if I keep it the same really?

So whilst I will never feel secure against law enforcement, shady government agencies or determined criminals, I'm probably a bit too much effort for advertisers.

As others have mentioned though. Any advert that encroaches on my consciousness without me explicitly seeking information, only serves to make me avoid that brand.

Now, where did I put my tinfoil?

Vapists rejoice! E-cigs lower cancer risk (if you stop smoking, duh)

janimal
Thumb Up

Re: frank ly

I have extensive experience of both inhaling tobacco smoke and inhaling e-cig vapour and I can tell you that after nine months of heavy vaping, I feel a heck of a lot better and don't get out of breath easily nowadays. Actually, I ought to stop now since it's become just a behavioural and psychological habit that doesn't provide me with any definite sense of physical relief.

I too felt physically much, much better after a 6 months of vaping rather than smoking.

Having quit vaping I feel even better! I started exercising then swimming, beach running. I had never been able to do any press ups my whole life & now at 50 I do ten every day. I'm not a fanatic or anything, but I look & feel so much better being able to get some exercise without gasping like a landed fish. So go for it, you'll save even more money and won't be at the mercy of government legislation.

janimal

Re: The idea is to quit

I forgot to add heart disease & gum disease, stained teeth, stinking clothes.

janimal
Facepalm

The idea is to quit

IF you use them to help you quit there are no long term effects. If you do use them long term it's quite hard to see how much worse they can be than...

COPD

Lung Cancer

Throat Cancer

impotence

Inability to exercise

Skin problems.

janimal
Stop

or short term quitting aid

I switched from fags to vaping for one year & then quit vaping. I had tried just stopping several times, also patches, and this weird NHS inhaler.

Yet it was the evil vapouriser in the end, enough like smoking to satisfy (to an extent) the craving but different enough to break the habits.

I haven't smoked (or vaped) for 3 years now.

McDonald's sues Italian city for $20m after being burger-blocked

janimal

Am I missing something?

Under what law or agreement is it even possible for a US company to sue a local council over a planning application rejection? What's the point of planning applications at all if a global corporation can sue for damages on rejection.

We really need to stop companies claiming precedence over democratically elected local or national government.

Sorry Nanny, e-cigs have 'no serious side-effects' – researchers

janimal

Re: Nicotine addiction?

@Kiwi

"Or, just a stray stupid thought, it could indicate that rats, like people, are more likely to ingest nicotine when awake?"

Of course all animals need to be awake in order to consciously decide to do anything! The point I was making is that whilst they initially only self administer during their normal waking hours as would be expected with something that is just pleasurable to them, that gradually changes over time so that they actually wake during their downtime to S.A. - suggesting that a physical withdrawal response is disturbing their natural circadian rhythm. Did you actually read the report before coming to your conclusion? If not I demand your boffin icon be retracted.

janimal

Re: Being probably the most rabibly antismoking person I know

As an ex-smoker thanks to vaping and an ex-vaper thanks to not actually wanting to habitually inhale anything just for the sake of it. There are times when I would prefer someone to be smoking a cigarette.

My friend is one of those cloud monsters & is fond of custard and other sickly sweet flavoured juices. When he exhales a massive cumulonimbus of custard I just want to vomit. It really makes me choke.

janimal

Re: Nicotine addiction?

@steven Raith

First: I am pro vapourisers for smoking cessation

"Show evidence of notable addiction to nicotine in humans without other tobacco smoke compounds involved (as they aren't involved in vaping). You know, the sort of evidence where there's a measurable behavioural response.

No, really. There just isn't any - partially due to their being no appetite for researching it, and partially because until recently, getting nicotine recreationally without smoke being involved (bar Snus) was basically just not on the radar.

Fact remains that the only time you see evidence of anything approaching addiction in relation to nicotine is when tobacco smoke is involved."

There doesn't need to be a behavioural response to show pharmacological addiction - merely a measurable physical response.

I have indeed been searching since yesterday for research into nicotine addiction as well as reading the Frenk & Dar paper. I could find no studies testing nicotine addiction without tobacco.

There are however studies where nicotine free tobacco is used by the control group - Cannabinoid receptor 1 (CNR1) gene variant moderates neural index of cognitive disruption during nicotine withdrawal.

More recent studies than those criticised by Frenk & Dar testing the effects of stress on nicotine self administration using rats provide the nicotine directly through a catheter. Whilst not testing addiction or withdrawal, paragraphs in the results of that study and some of those linked suggest to me that nicotine is addictive (in rats at least);

"Consistent with previous reports (O'Dell et al. 2007; Valentine et al. 1997), in this study, most nicotine injections were obtained during the dark phase of the light cycle when rats are most active. However, with very prolonged access to nicotine SA (e.g., 40 days), nicotine intake was reported to be less circadian, and the difference in nicotine intake between dark and light phases diminished"

Due to time constraints I am going to have to assume that any flaws in the 1988 experiments have been addressed in those from1997, 2007 & 2010.

I could find no studies that show there is zero physical response to the withdrawal of nicotine. Since the measurable physical effects can be used to differentiate control and target groups in studies, for the moment I have to consider that nicotine is addictive. I'm not drawing any conclusions about quantifying how addictive.

Now anecdotally; I come from a social group in which almost every body smoked, something like 95% we all loved herbs and delivery methods were less diverse even only a few years ago. A large number of those friends of mine have ditched tobacco totally, with just a few using vapes only in situations they are not allowed to light a cigarette. Of the vape users 1 has reduced his nicotine content to almost zero (mixes his own juice), but loves vaping and doesn't intend to give it up. Only 3 of the others have quit vaping as well. The others that continue to vape have tried reducing the nicotine, but find they simply cannot maintain reduced dose or quit.

I personally found giving up vaping almost as hard as giving up smoking, but yes breaking the habitual rituals of smoking was instrumental and only possible through vaping.

I agree that the habitual aspects of smoking are a major part of the difficulty in giving up smoking, but you cannot at this stage dismiss nicotine as non addictive pharmacologically.

PS in the many studies that do study smoking addiction it is worth noting that the physical response to withdrawal varies quite widely (as with many other pharmacologically addictive substances) so simply because you can easily give it up doesn't make it non-addictive.

PPS as the authors of the report you cited noted. Once you tell someone something is addictive, people use that as an excuse to stop trying to give up. So maybe the truth isn't always the best thing to hear.

janimal

Re: Addiction

@moiety

"Psychological addiction isn't controversial at all .It's quite well established that it both occurs and affects different people in different ways and to different degrees. The difficulty -because it's subjective- is putting numbers on it."

It is controversial in psychology, not because psychological dependence doesn't exist or isn't a serious problem but because co-opting the term which always applied previously to a physical dependence upon a chemical substance to apply to mental dependence you;

1) confuse the general public & give the tabloids more ammunition to spread disinformation and outrage.

2) You muddy the waters for treatment of both.

This is why it is controversial because it is constantly being debated in psychology research. Ultimately at the lowest level you could probably argue that a psychological addiction ends up having a chemical basis due to our internal reward mechanism, but I am firmly on the side that using the term addiction for both conditions does no-one any favours especially when most people prefer simple but wrong over complex but true.

I am all for vaping, I switched to vaping two years ago and quite vaping last year.

But when people start thinking that quitting nicotine is just the same as quitting chocolate or coffee it helps no one.

The way modern language is going, we seem to be heading backwards. Words are becoming more general and less specific. I think we'll all be just grunting again pretty soon

janimal

Re: Thank heavens it's harmless ...

"Also another interesting thing about the TPD is that they are limiting bottle sizes to 10ml because of the danger of ingesting the juice (most here come in 15ml or 30ml bottles), yet you can still go to your local shop and buy a litre bottle of bleach!"

Or a litre cheap vodka - just as effective for suicide, but less painful.

janimal
FAIL

Re: Addiction

@Cynic_999

Like so many people out there you are confusing the very controversial idea of psychological addiction with the very real pharmacological addiction.

Video games are not addictive.

The incredibly mild and short-lived physical response of caffeine withdrawal barely qualifies.

Windows Update borks PowerShell – Microsoft won't fix it for a week

janimal

Re: Seriously if you installed windows 10, is this your first visit to The Reg?

Or perhaps IT professionals, despite being personally sure of the likely quality and problems associated with Wx are still impelled to install it at least once to ensure their impression is accurate or even more likely they may have to support it or develop to it?

I have never wanted to use windows, but my employers always said I had to.

janimal

Re: Windows 7 Update Hell

I found this out a couple of weeks ago after leaving a new install searching for updates for 4 hours. It took me a couple more hours to find a solution because frankly the internet in general and search engines in particular are virtually completely broken these days. Any search returns many commercial results but almost no informed knowledge. Don't you just love default AND searches <sigh>

Anyway after installing these it identified the required updates in around 10 minutes and then took around 1-2 hours to download them.

Good luck!

janimal

Re: The little voice...

I agree there has been a distinct reduction in quality not just in software, but in almost every sphere of human endeavour.

When I went to Uni I deliberately chose specifically a Software Engineering degree believing that the industry would inevitably be forced to take up engineering principles and apply decent design methodologies in order to produce quality code. Especially considering how much of our lives were going to be increasingly dominated by software.

Sadly exactly the opposite happened.

People bandy around the term Engineer, without any professional Engineering qualifications

Companies consider design up front to be an expensive luxury they can't afford.

I was employed by a chemical engineering software company whose products were used to design & build huge, safety critical, chemical and petrochemical processing sites. Assuming their engineering principles would extend to the tools they use to build these things. Sadly I was much mistaken.

On my first day I had a 5 minute chat with my manager & we did a bit of white boarding for my first task in his office. What I didn't realise was the two sentences I came out of that meeting with was actually his idea of a design spec for the project which was intended to take 6 months of coding.

Before the end of day he wanted to know why I hadn't written any code yet!

This department used to pretty much rewrite applications from scratch when they wanted to add some functionality. Sometimes because the application had been written in a way that it was impossible to extend and sometimes because the code was so cryptic no-one could untangle it.

Once I was allowed to lead the dev team I would assign 3 of the 6 months for requirements & design. We never rewrote another piece of software, we frequently would implement functionality given 6 months by management, in 6 weeks. Simply because it was designed to be extendible and also because the extensive requirements spec would also give major clues to the next several years of developments.

If it is done correctly engineered software can massively reduce development, time, costs and ongoing maintenance costs.

In the years since I find most developers I have encountered, still don't believe that to be true & management are much, much harder to convince.

These days people seem to forget that there are a number of development methodologies available (if they use any at all). Often though these are just box ticking exercises.

Another thing I encountered more recently was management insisting we use Agile, even in completely inappropriate situations. It really isn't necessary if you \re building an application for which all the functionality is known at the start.

If we built buildings, bridges, cars, planes or chemical plants the same way we build software, civilisation would collapse (and explode, plummet, crumble etc...)

As we rely more and more on software to control our lives we really should be trying to find ways to re-introduce some quality into its production. Sadly I have lost all faith that that will ever happen.

janimal

Re: Win 10 weekly russian roulett

well you could try out linux from a live DVD or Live USB or install VirtualBox for your virtual machine needs, maybe VMware still have some free solutions, but I'm not sure. VMware offerings stopped making sense to me a long time ago.

janimal
Boffin

Re: Windows 7 Update Hell

You need to know the special secret sauce...

From very recent experience I can tell you If you have w7 SP1 and want to update you need to manually apply the following two patches first...

KB3050265

KB3102810

The rest of the 280 odd patches will download normally after applying these two.

Good luck!

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

janimal

Re: Gutted

@graeme leggett

Eight hours later that appears to be wrong. The EU is saying, no need to wait until October, you've made your decision get on with the process.

No doubt the brexitters will be spinning this as EU sour grapes or vengeance. Realistically though the EU has no choice.

First financial stability for the rest the EU & actually the world relies on some predictability.

Secondly the EU now has to demonstrate to other nations right wing factions that there is a severe cost to leaving and that the EU's responsibility is to provide stability to its member states above defectors.

Don't expect the necessary ensuing trade deals with the EU to be particularly favourable to the UK.

[edit] Wow three in a row. I would be killed in certain areas of the net for such disgraceful behaviour!

janimal

Re: Gutted

@Mark85 "Name any country that isn't be sold down the river for the corporates or, soon will be?"

So because it will probably happen eventually, we shouldn't bother trying to defend against it?

The rest of the EU will probably now avoid the very worst parts of TTIP, at least the negotiations have been dragged kicking and screaming into the light to face public scrutiny thanks to the protests of the citizens of the member states.

We in the UK however can be prepared to have several hundred carcinogenic and potentially toxic chemicals currently banned from use in the EU re-introduced to manufacturing and food processing to ease trade between the UK and US with absolutely no opportunity to oppose it.

We'll likely also have several health & safety regulations reduced or removed to "ease trade" with the US. The deaths and ill health of ourselves and our children are simply statistics to these people. The combined strength of the EU citizens (not the EU parliaments) was our only defence especially since both Labour and the Conservatives are in favour of the TTIP.

So far everybody I have actually spoken to who voted Leave had no idea how our own democracy worked, let alone how the EU affected it and have never heard of the Working time directive or TTIP.

They just go on about the housing crisis or "sovereignty". When I ask what the hell the EU has to do with the housing crisis it then comes back to.... guess what? Immigrants! We don't have room for immigrants.

We might actually have the room for immigrants if we threw out all the fuck wits who would rather read about the Kardashians than get an education.

PS. I'm a bit pissed now (not in the American sense, I've been fucking livid all day!)

janimal

Re: Gutted

re: "The UK has much better employment protection law than many other EU countries (and I speak as a UK citizen who lives elsewhere in the EU)."

I didn't respond to this earlier because I had no idea of the veracity of your statement. However, coincidental or made up as it might sound, my other half is an employment law consultant for a global financial company operating in every market on earth and is responsible for ensuring compliance throughout the EU and Asia. So this evening I asked her about this.

She just about managed to to articulate "bollocks!" through surprised laughter.

As always it is not black and white she explained, as we waited for the bus. The state of employee protections throughout the EU depends of the maturity of any given nation state. So certain member states haven't yet been able to implement all of the EU directives because such things take time.

However If you compare to France, Germany and other longer term members of the EU, the UK is by no means the leader in this regard. The UK vigorously opposed the EU working time directive initially and only eventually partially implemented it reluctantly.

Even now, although complying in many aspects they refuse to implement the investigatory powers and remedial actions covered by the directive.

I am paraphrasing what she said and recounting it after several drinks with some of our resident European friends at a local french jazz bar but I'm very confident you are wrong.

janimal
WTF?

Re: If I hear a single pensioner...

"I'm not better off from leaving the EU, but I do think it will provide better opportunity to improve our lot, as long as we want that and don't get mired down in 'what-if's' etc."

But isn't considering the "what-if's" the only way to navigate a bunch of possible futures - or do you just pick a random direction in the morning & hope it gets you to where you want to be? Oh hold on, that does seem to explain the Leave vote <sigh>

janimal

Take us too!

Brighton & Hove

janimal
Stop

Re: Don't underestimate the Brits!

eh? Since both Labour & Conservative supported TTIP and referendum's aren't exactly a common thing in the UK what opportunity do you think these plucky isolationists will have to reject a hastily constructed one sided US trade deal?

Please tell me?

janimal

Re: Nice

On the plus side we'll be out of TTIP :)

On the negative side can you see any of our trough swilling leadership saying no to reducing our safety standards and regulations to US levels in the interests of their post parliamentary nest egg free trade?

janimal
FAIL

Re: Gutted

@ AC "You are really not well informed. Gee don't know where to begin to rip your statement apart."

I am actually completely aware of all of your points, but you fail to see the nuances of how the democracy & better engagement of the individual nations that make up the EU have an effect on that un-elected body - it is the citizens of the individual countries who are engaged enough to vote and protest in proportionally represented parliaments that temper the worst excesses of the politicians and corporations. We have just made that our responsibility. How many Leave voters are going to get off their arses to defend against TTIP?

I suspect that we'll be seeing the relaxing of regulations requested by the US corporations in TTIP the second we have left the EU as a way to try to rescue our fucked economy.

see my post above http://forums.theregister.co.uk/user/9612/

janimal

Re: @AC re "But maybe this isn't (well, wasn't, now) the case in the UK"

The difference being that the vast majority of EU countries have a more democratic system and a better educated, more engaged populace. Making it much harder for their leaders to get away with that crap.

We, on the other hand have a hilarious cartoon democracy giving us an illusion of any choice or say. Your MP doesn't reflect your viewpoint in parliament, they follow the whip on anything remotely important and fuck what you or the majority in your constituency want (which of course they never ask you anyway - you can write to your MP but 5 out of the 6 times I have done so I received a stock letter - twice about completely different subjects - yay!)

I haven't seen many UK based anti TTIP protests in the UK and when you do they are more general anti-globalisation protests carried out by people who all look completely anti-establishment and consequently of zero value to the middle class who assume they are talking bollocks or want to burn their garden sheds (full disclosure, I have a garden shed)

I voted remain because for the last 20 years we have been relying on the good citizens of the EU to defend us from exploitation. We just kissed their protection goodbye.

I am guessing UK citizens privacy will be the first casualty, followed by HRC, then working time directive.

janimal
WTF?

Gutted

Half my family live and work in Europe and more than half of my friends here in Brighton are Europeans living & working here, although they are at least all married to UK citizens these days so they won't have to leave.

It has put a massive question over my retirement plan, which was to be euthanisia in Belgium!

The EU's biggest effect on my life has been all the policies which have protected us from our own politicians and corporations trying to milk us as product. So I look forward to a future where the leaders of our faux democracy are now free to sell us (the citizens) down the river in the name of corporate profits & backhanders.

The irony is that any negative economic effects will be most felt by the idiots who thought leaving was going to fix a single thing that they care about.

My daily mail reading (and consequently brexit voting) mother is under the impression that she will suddenly be able to get an appointment for her hip in weeks instead of months.

Still at least we now have our sovereignty.

Excellent AA Gill article here - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aa-gill-argues-the-case-against-brexit-kmnp83zrt

Pointless features add to browser bloat and insecurity

janimal

Re: It's flawed research ...

@TeeCee

The examples he quoted are all efficiency based improvements that greatly reduce the bandwidth and cpu cycles required to serve a website. As well as helping to make the data device agnostic.

These specific features really are necessary technologies for both improving the experience and capabilities as well as reducing the bandwidth / storage / energy of digital communications.

The issue is that it takes time for the feature to get implemented consistently across browsers, therefore it takes time before developers feel comfortable making use of it on a regular basis.

Advertisers have always been willing to go bleeding edge and I'm sure they jumped at the chance to use SVG & Canvas immediately.

I have just created my first set of svg graphics for a client site & as a developer I can say they are bloody awesome. They resize to the viewport and are easy to edit - you can also edit them using javascript.

Because they are text rendered by the browser they are highly compressible. SVG's will make up a huge proporiton of web graphics in a few years time.

Licence to snoop: Ipso facto, crypto embargo? Draft Investigatory Powers bill lands

janimal

Re: Websites != "communication"

This is test legislation.

This web history thing is so trivial to bypass that even many barely technical folks already do so. I have had several people in the last couple of years tell me they have vpn configured at the router, by themselves, a relative or a friend.

If this gets passed in it's current form then it will be a stepping stone to something else....

"Oh no! Look! Everyone is using encryption now - and we cannot have a communications method that we can't access with a warrant so...ooh what's this I have here?"

Well that appears to be the Government Key Escrow scheme you wanted to propose back in 1998!

As you will no doubt already know, crypto with a back door is not crypto. However they'll 'spin' key escrow as "strong, unbreakable encryption that we have a bone fide key for."

Let's hope it never comes to that....

janimal
Big Brother

Several points

An ip address doesn't identify an individual

On radio 4 this morning the policewoman they were getting to tell us to think of the children seemed to equate an IP address with an individual (paedophile, in case you couldn't guess).

I've lived in houses with 6 or 7 people living there, and there's always guests and their phones.

So even if they are targetting an individual and requesting data about an IP address, what about the right to privacy for the rest of the individuals behind that IP address?

Judicial Authorisation

The police will be able to get basic domain history with permission of a superior officer. A Complete history can only be acquired with judicial authorisation (from the bbc article). Will they publish how many times and under what circumstances such requests were denied?

I should imagine something along the lines of "We can see they accessed the piratebay.se he's probably a pirate, but he could be a terrorist." or "She visited gnupg.org" or torproject.org, wikileaks.org or shop.ilovegrowingmarijuana.com could easily prompt a "Dear Reichsführer May letter."

Do you see the judges turning them down?

Growing MJ is illegal, warrant granted.

Tor users are all terrorists, peado's or junkies & dealers - warrant granted.

We need Anonymous to start snaffling MP's browsing history

Now you can be tracked online by your email addy. Thanks, Google!

janimal

Re: Nobody likes being tracked, but...

On the other hand, as several comments above mention, avoiding ads and tracking is a dark art reserved for a paranoid & knowledgeable few, and maybe their loved ones.

I know plenty of people who don't like the thought of being tracked or targeted, but just can't quite make the small effort to defend against it.

El-Reg ads are targeted at a particular demographic. A demographic which is almost certainly the best informed and most able to avoid ads and ad-tracking. I would hazard a guess that many readers either don't block ads or have the site white-listed otherwise it would have disappeared long ago. I think that might change if they suddenly started seeing very personally targeted adverts.

AVG to flog your web browsing, search history from mid-October

janimal

Re: We wont pay for data slurping pesterware

You should have let the business get pwned. There is no reason at all a business shouldn't pay for security. System security is one of the costs of doing business.

They could probably save vast sums by doing away with premises and networks in the first place and just getting all the staff to meet up at starbucks and use public wi-fi, but they won't.

By not paying at least the cost value for that required business resource (AV) they risk that resource only being available at a much higher price by the time they realise it really is necessary.

We cannot allow unspecified data about our computing systems to leave our business.

In which case you probably should be relying on more than just Free AV software on each user machine!

Doctor Who storms back in fine form with Season 9 opener The Magician's Apprentice

janimal

Quality

Based on the quality of the writing in the last few years, it wouldn't surprise me if they use the "it was all a dream" plot twist.

Or maybe 'love' will fix everything?

janimal
Unhappy

magic crap

The trouble with Dr Who is that it is kid's fantasy dressed up as sci-fi. These days I feel like I'm watching the truly terrible Merlin rather than so9me sci-fi.

In story telling ultimate power must come at a price otherwise you can magically extract yourself and your friends from any peril.

Time travel is supposed to be fraught with difficulties and potential universally apocalyptic paradox scenarios etc... These things should constrain the protagonist's ability to solve a situation and thus force some clever solution to be thought of rather than 'magic'

For example if it is OK for him to dump 20th Century military hardware in the middle ages, then surely it is acceptable for him to use that same hardware (or future military hardware) to defend humanity.

In fact, if time travel is so non-trivial that he doesn't have to worry about paradoxes or ripping the universe to pieces at the quantum level or whatever then a great many of hius problems can be solved by simply going back in time & removing the baddies at birth or going to the future and returning with OP future tech for the potential victims of evil to defend themselves.

It doesn't have to be realistic, but it should at least try to be internally consistent. The trouble is that next time a 20th Century tank (or 24th Century armed flying car) will solve the problem that's what I'll be erroneously expecting.

Series 1 of renta ghost was more consistent than this garbage. I'm forced to watch it because the missus does. At least it now has Michelle Gomez in it I suppose. I can watch her hamming it up all day.

'Major' outage at Plusnet borks Brits' browsing, irate folk finger DNS

janimal
FAIL

Re: Useless 'status page'

Have you never heard of a smartphone? 4g dongle? Internet cafe? Stealing neighbours wi-fi? etc... etc...

Virtually no one is using Apple Music even though it is utterly free

janimal

Me too

I believe I had a spotify account many years ago. I only tried it out twice :/

janimal

Re: It is the functionality, not the catalogue of music that matters

The problem with genre's is they are subjective, fluid and ever changing. The R&B that I know is nothing like what kids call R&B today - in fact what they call R&B today is probably nothing like R&B just 10 years ago.

Most mainstream music tends to straddle multiple genres anyway. I personally wouldn't find a genre search much use except at the highest level, and realistically I would miss a whole bunch of music that I do like that isn't in that genre.

Anyhow my opinion really doesn't count. I stopped buying new music when they killed napster and winmx (per track P2P networks)

Microsoft's Windows 10 Torrent-U-Like updates GULP DOWN your precious bandwidth

janimal
Boffin

Re: How come...?

well if you read the posts above you'll see that you can apparently define a network connection as metered & W10 won't use it.

I'm not defending the design or MS' decision to hide away the settings & info. I think it's a dodgy idea.

Windows 10 in head-on crash with Nvidia drivers as world watches launch

janimal

Re: Forced updates are something I just refuse to accept.

Can't you disable the Google update service(s)?

Otherwise, un-install it?

Windows 10: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to Microsoft's long apology for Windows 8

janimal

Re: Wow!

Personally I always enjoy a fresh round of Microsoft hatred on the interwebs.

Their demise can't come soon enough.

janimal

Re: Why call it Windows?

I think his fundamental point is sound though.

MS should completely separate the GUI from the underlying functionality and then they could sell (consistent) Desktop Environments for different use cases.

Or allow 3rd party developers to create Desktop Environments for specialist cases.

This allows businesses (amongst others) to take advantage of underlying improvements to security & speed without having to keep reluctantly retraining staff at vast expense.

Soft. Eng. best practice has been to (generally) separate out the interface from the functionality from the data for 30 years. This has worked exceptionally well in all the massive modelling / optimiser projects I worked on over the years.

janimal

Multiple Desktops

Are indeed a very useful thing... I use them all the time in linux , but I also used them all the time in win XP and still use them in W7.

I use a free (for private use) app called Dexpot. I'm sure even though MS finally realised the utility of multiple desktops I'm sure they will have done it half arsed anyway, Dexpot has tons of configuration options, plus some 'bling' options (cube, windows roll ups, transparency etc...) inspired by compiz

So even if you do go for w10 (not for me thanks) you might still want to check it out...

janimal

Done properly

...is not a phrase I often associate with Microsoft, and definitely not with Windows

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