Posts by Loudon D'Arcy

After clash over Rust in Linux, now Asahi lead quits distro, slams Linus' kernel leadership

Re: And nothing of value was lost

If only there was some kind of Unix-like FreeBSD-derived operating system that could run on Apple silicon... <gazes longingly into the distance>

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

Re: More than light fingered

Back in the late-1990's, a couple of men in white lab coats walked into one of the computer labs at my local further-education college, and began to transfer the 486 computers off the desks and onto trolleys, before wheeling them out of the lab. None of the students or staff batted an eyelid.

Shortly afterwards, a local police car found itself following a white transit van that had just left the college's premises. By the greatest stroke of luck imaginable, the officers decided to pull the vehicle over and discovered two men in white lab coats with a van full of 486 computers...

UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant

Yes, "The Big Short" was a fantastic movie. I actually bought a copy of that one on DVD!

P.S. To my two downvoters: Keir? Rachel? ...is that you?

Thank you for the link, AC; I've downloaded that.

I've had a quick read of the contents page; its warnings remind me of "The Final Crash" by Hugo Bouleau, which predicted the 2008 crash twelve months before it happened.

So I'll certainly give it a read. And thanks again!

Upvoted, AC. An informed and well thought-out comment.

The insanity of the 'growth-at-any-cost' mindset is summed up in the headline of a ZeroHedge article I saw a couple of weeks ago: It Took $5.80 In Debt To Generate $1 Of US "Growth" In The Fourth Quarter

Mega city council's Oracle finance fix faces further delays

Australian ERP software

> However if you don't work in the Public Sector, you probably won't have any experience of any of these people: Civica, Capita (ok maybe that one), Access, NEC, IDOX.

Australian software companies who specialise in local government ERP systems don't seem to be on anyone's radar in the northern hemisphere...

CouncilFirst

TechnologyOne

ReadyTech

...which is a shame if they're delivering a better product than the usual suspects.

Welsh woman fined for flatulence-fueled cyber harassment

Re: Just, how?!?

Perhaps her merkin was smirking?

Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors

The usual procedure is for government to use the Parliament Act to ram legislation through the Commons and into law (e.g. Blair's fox hunting ban).

UK government tech procurement lacks understanding, says watchdog

Re: The conclusion is obvious, but...

Okay, I used imprecise language.

Yes, the app was a snip, at a mere £35 million. (How did the devs keep food on the table?)

The Test And Trace system was allocated a total budget of £37 billion over two years. But only 25.7 billion had been spent by June 2022, with a lifetime cost of £29.3 billion.

Nevertheless, it was still an astoundingly huge sum of money to spend on a single, short-term IT project.

BBC: Covid-19: NHS Test and Trace 'no clear impact' despite £37bn budget

BMJ: Covid-19: NHS Test and Trace failed despite “eye watering” budget, MPs conclude

Re: The conclusion is obvious, but...

> See NHS IT scandal and the yet to occur AI everywhere nonsense announced recently.

Don't forget the Covid "Test and Trace" app, which cost... <deep breath> ...£37 billion.

The Independent: Scathing report blasts ‘unimaginable’ £37bn cost of coronavirus test and trace system

(For comparison's sake, the cost of building the Panama Canal was estimated at $639 million in 1914. In today's money, that's the equivalent of $20.1 billion or £16.5 billion. The Channel Tunnel cost £9.5 billion in 1994, which is equivalent to £19.5 billion today. Combined cost = £36 billion)

Foundation model for tabular data slashes training from hours to seconds

Anyone remember Lotus Improv?

"Within a few months, Pito had come up with the fundamental idea at the core of Improv: that the raw data in a spreadsheet, the way that the user views the data, and the formulas used to perform calculations can all be separated from each other."

"Column letters, row numbers, and cell formulas, the main source of frustration for spreadsheet users, are all gone."

"In their place are rows and columns labeled in plain English, and an independent list of formulas that use those labels, making Improv, in essence, a relational spreadsheet."

https://instadeq.com/blog/posts/no-code-history-lotus-improv-spreadsheets-done-right-1991/

Microsoft tests 45% M365 price hikes in Asia-Pacific to see how much you enjoy AI

Play it safe, Doctor. Just give 'em a link...

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=import+pst+to+thunderbird&ia=web

I recently had lots of fun (!) writing a Python script which grabbed all of the old e-mails in a directory (saved as plain-text '.eml' files) and then turned them into a single HTML page, displaying all of the messages in chronological order, complete with "To", "From", "Date" and "Subject" fields.

The earliest e-mails from the 1990s were quite easy to convert as they were simply formatted and didn't have many text headers; but the most recent ones sent from MS mail-clients had an astounding amount of meta-data to wade through.

Vendor lock-in

A Microsoft spokesperson sent us the following statement:

"Your balls are in the palm of my right hand. Now pay up."

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

Re: outnumber those who need to run ChatGPT

> Who wants to wait multiple seconds or even minutes to get a response?

Jeff Geerling has tested the 16GB RasPi with an LLM, and found that it generates about one word per second...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWi16EROKc&t=270s

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: Another good reason to stay with Windows 10 for now?

It's funny; Zorin OS is a Linux distribution that's been specially designed to make Windows users feel at home—and yet I never see it mentioned by people who are entertaining the idea of switching. I suppose it just isn't as well known as Ubuntu or Mint...

What is Zorin OS? Linux for People Who Don’t Want to Leave Windows

Zorin OS - Make Your Computer Better

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Re: 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilko

Re: 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

And the release of the X16 appears to have inspired more new 8-bit machines...

The Pi Hut: AgonLight2 - Z80 BBC Basic Retro Single Board Computer

The Pi Hut: Olimex Neo6502

Re: 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

> On paper the 8-bits were superseded in 1985 but in the real word there life in the old dog yet.

^This. The Amiga 1000 may well have been released in (late) 1985, but it cost $1300. The ST was $1000 with a colour monitor. It wasn't until 1987 that the Amiga 500 was released, and even then, it didn't really take off in the UK until the price was cut to £399 in the middle of 1988. We were all still using our 8-bit machines well into the late 1980's.

> Sort of like seeing 80s houses in present-day films, it looks like some hallucinogenic neon decoration but in the real world houses had decorations and furniture from the 70s or even 60s.

Don't get me started. If I see another TV "re-creation" of the 1980's where everyone's dressed like a member of Kajagoogoo, I'm gonna scream.

Re: Glory Days

You're not alone, John. Headless laptops are indeed a "thing"...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=headless+laptop

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Re: Turtles

JP, you might want to bookmark this one...

BBC Horizon – Talking Turtle [46 min, 57 secs]

$800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

Re: It happened to the McLaren F1 fuel injection first.

Yes, that was rather good. Thank you for the recommendation, PB.

Cautionary Tales – Laser Versus Parchment: Doomsday for the Disc

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

To recreate the ‘green-screen’ olden days in your terminal/console window:

• Install the ‘Terminus TTF’ font on your computer (https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/)

• Change your console window’s font to be Terminus at 20pt bold (regular is too skinny).

• Change your console window’s text colour to R92-G202-B29 (hex: #5CCA1D) and background colour to R18-G44-B13 (#122C0D). For the amber-screen look, text = R232-G178-B67, background = R36-G17-B12.

(For added nostalgia, attach a Dymo label to your computer that says "PROPERTY OF THE LIBRARY", and sprinkle crisp crumbs and tiny bits of sticky confectionery into your keyboard.)

Raspberry Pi 5 slims down for cut-price 2 GB RAM version

"How much?!?"

I suspect that the $30 price tag on a 6GB upgrade will confuse a lot of Apple owners.

Re: Why

> Why does The Register keep randomly logging me out, no matter what browser I use.

I tried to upvote you Stevie. But I was stopped by a login screen... </ohtheirony>