Posts by MickeyLane

Before the megabit: A trip through vintage datacenter networking

Party lines + modems

I lived in rural Colorado (US) back in the 70s and for telephones, we had party lines. This was where 4 houses were on the same POTS line and you got 1, 2, 3 or 4 rings to indicated which house should pick up the phone. Of course the other houses could pick up and listen in but generally speaking, people behaved back then.

I - being an engineer at DEC and a geek to boot - had a desire to dial into the department computer (*) from home. 300 baud Hayes modems and party lines don't mix. I wound up getting my own dedicated party line. I don't recall how much it cost. As noted, there were warnings and prohibitions about connecting 'weird' stuff to the company's lines which everyone ignored.

* An RSX-11M machine named BALROG

Re: 75 baud

TECO to the rescue.

It's been noted that a real manly man knows what happens when he types his full name into a TECO session and hits escape.

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Re: Notepad(--)

There are instructions out there for running the old Windows 10 Notepad.exe on Windows 11. Also the old Windows Photo Viewer.exe. Makes life better.

Gee

"According to Microsoft, one of the most common frustrations is "finding and changing settings on your PC."

Maybe if they stopped moving stuff around for no purpose whatsoever with each release...

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

AI? Poof. I'd be happy if File Explorer stopped shifting everything around just as I was moving a file.

Suggested Actions fails to suggest its own survival as Windows 11 feature killed

I wish they would depreciate File Explorer's habit of constantly moving the left pane around. I've lost count of the times some file got misdirected because just as you were clicking a destination, everything moved. For no reason.

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Meh

I have a Windows 10 box in my shed that does one thing only - run the Blue Iris security camera DVR package. There's no way anything outside can get to it so I don't really care if it even uses passwords. It doesn't have a Microsoft account to log into. It only uses the locally hosted Administrator account.

About a month ago, I installed a 2.5GHz Ethernet interface and disabled the onboard interface via the BIOS. Bad move. All of a sudden, my machine is 'not activated'. After many bad words and Fruitless Googles, I re-enabled the interface in the BIOS, disabled it in the network Control Panel thing and re-activated the machine.

I have NO inclination to mess with it any more.

Re: <shrug>

If your VM becomes a pain in the neck, check out VueScan. Costs but works on anything (I think)

Mozilla's Firefox browser turns 20. Does it still matter?

I hate ads

I've used Firefox as my default for lots of years. With Firefox, you can block most ads. Chrome is run by the people who produce the ads so you're not likely to get very far with it in that regard.

What I'm waiting patiently for is a browser than can outwit those sites who say "We've noticed you're using an ad blocker. Give us money."

Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking

Amateures

Before Windows 11, there was Windows NT

Before Windows NT, there was VMS

Before VMS, there was RSX11-M

Dave Cutler's fingerprints are found on all three of these systems. As far as I know, Cutler is still working for Microsoft.

On RSX, terminal input (keyboard) and text output (console or cmd window) were two separate things.

There was a utility program (CLI verb) called PIP that allowed one to assign inputs and outputs to user accounts.

If Curt wanted to be a trouble maker, he could assign Jill's terminal input to, say, Susan and Susan's terminal input to Jill and leave the terminal outputs alone.

Whatever Jill typed would show up on Susan's screen and execute whatever the command was under Susan's account and whatever Susan typed would go to Jill in a like manner.

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Old School

People will finally reach the melting point with Windows 11/12/13 and revert to VMS on PC iron.