Posts by Graham Lee

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

Other smalltalks/lisps

In addition to Squeak, there's another popular, Free Software implementation of Smalltalk, Pharo (pharo.org), which has a lot more focus on higher-level development tools. On the LISP side, a lot of GNU components use the Scheme dialect GUILE to control a GNU OS at the lowest levels: the GNU Shepherd daemon manager, GNU GUIX package manager, and another interesting component is GNU MES (a small LISP interpreter and a small C compiler that can bootstrap each other, for bringing up a whole system from a free software core).

Tone deaf? Microsoft must have booked Sting for Davos because he's a good singer

Re: ChatGPT

They worked with Sting to find out whether ChatGPT is the Ghost in the Machine.

A fête worse than death: After struggling to connect into SAP's SapphireNow online shindig, we were all 'rewarded' with a Sting concert

Don't stand so close to me (within 2m)

To be fair, he did write the song of the moment.

Q. How exactly do you test car seats? A. With this sweaty 'robutt' that twerks for days and days

Low resolution

"The Register isn't entirely sure why Rohwer would argue that exercise would be more a part of our everyday lives during the rather chilly month of January (at least for those in the Northern Hemisphere) than it would at other times of the year."

Gym membership is highest in January.

It walks, it talks, it falls over a bit. Windows 10 is three years old

August 5th

Time for the true Windows 10 retrospective...it'll be 3.11 years old.

The glorious uncertainty: Backup world is having a GDPR moment

Sometimes

These backup vendors and data privacy consultants are trying to define what the right to erasure is but sometimes it's the broken heart that decides.

Now THAT'S a landslide victory: Astroboffins snap avalanche on a comet in science first

Re: Correction...

How many Waleseseses is that?

Got to dash out for some rubber johnnies? Amazon has a button for that

"That is until the bleeding WiFi goes down and pathetic humans are forced to brave the sunlight and risk coming into contact with others." who's pressing the Durex button and _hasn't_ come into contact with others?

I'll press the button that delivers my coat within an hour.

Happy birthday, Amiga: The 'other' home computer turns 30

Re: Came here for the obligatory Babylon 5 reference

'course, I found it after the post was approved…

Came here for the obligatory Babylon 5 reference

…and didn't find it. From http://www.geek.com/games/cgi-first-introduced-to-tv-in-babylon-5-by-mit-presentor-771051/:

> They used 24 Amiga 2000s, 16 of which were dedicated rendering engines. They had 32 megabytes of RAM, a Fusion-40 accelerator and the Toaster. The Amigas were connected via a Novell network and sent data to a 12 gigabyte 486 PC file server. They later upgraded to Pentium and Alpha-based systems.

Getting my coat^WVorlon encounter suit now…

$533 MEEELLION – the cost of Apple’s iTunes patent infringement

Re: Only if they happened to be for sale.

Well, a bit of them is. According to http://www.intc.com/intel-annual-report/2013/10K/22-issuer-purchases-of-equity-securities.html Intel was buying back a lot of Intel in 2013, so there's less of Intel for sale.

Chromecast hack Rickrolls Google's TV stick

Rickrolling wi-fi devices

It sounds like a harmless bit of fun, but every time you subsequently try to connect the Chromecast to a network it remains undiscoverable. You ask for its IP address and it says "I'm never gonna give you ARP".

Bucket? Check. Toilet plunger? Check. El Reg's 50 years of Doctor Who

Re: Only 11 actors?

How many times does Sylvester McCoy count? He played two different Doctors in one episode, as Colin Baker didn't come back for the 6-7 regeneration scene.</anorak>

Fatty French Kilogram needs a new-year diet, say Brit boffins

Re: "Just how do you convert a physical entity to a mathematical scribble?"

A kilogram of water is as much a "physical entity" as a kilogram of platinum and iridium (also known as positronic brain stuff: http://www.tgdaily.com/entertainment/55384-stock-and-trade-us-robots-and-mechanical-men).

Brits swallow Google Nexus 4 supply 'in 30 minutes'

"Company claims to have sold an unspecified number of things"

> There's clearly a pattern emerging from tech launches these days: announce the launch date and, on the day, sit back and await the 'sold out immediately' headlines.

On the one hand, you could put your money where your principles are and refuse to publish such non-news. On the other hand, if forum posts are a useful proxy for page views, you made quite a few ad dollars yourselves out of this "story".

I imagine companies don't tell you what the numbers are because they're uninspiringly low numbers. "We sold all of the 3000 UK Nexus 4s (which excludes the ones we'd already sold to carriers)" is less compelling.

Liberator: the untold story of the first British laptop part 1

Any Sophistry involved?

Coincidentally, Sophos was founded in a house in Oxford in early 1985, and coincidentally, one of their early products was a prototype portable computer. I wonder whether they might have been one of the companies that the DTI approached.

'Four horsemen' posse: This here security town needs a new sheriff

Your whisky identification guide.

Jack Daniels, quoted multiple times in the above article, is a variety of bourbon, while Jack Daniel is a ZZ Top lookalike and much-loved infosec community figure.

Apple Maps to the rescue in China/Japan conflict

Re: Dodged one

As linked from the article, this page demonstrates that the islands are duplicated on the map. http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31969863003/senkaku-diaoyu-islands-diplomatic-territorial

Facepalming not only at you, but at my decision to spend time reading the article to you.

Ghostbusters

Re: I believe Ecto1 was an ambulance not a hearse.

Indeed, an ambulance. Anoraks at the ready: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters_(franchise)#Transportation

Password hints easily snaffled from Windows PCs

Re: @Graham

12345? Amazing. That's the same combination I've got on my luggage!

Twitter API outrage: Break our rules and we'll break app kneecaps

On the meaning of end-points

"The new rules alter the number of API calls third-party apps can make from different “end points” – meaning a twit's devices or PCs running that application."

I took it to mean API endpoints - i.e. the different features exposed by the API. So you could have a different rate for reading mentions than posting photos, which currently isn't supported.

Apple finally grabs apple.co.uk – after just 16 years

Exchange of prisoners

While they probably ended up paying handsomely for the domain, I'm sure they could've come to some arrangement where the US gets apple.co.uk in return for the UK getting next.com. It turns out that "warmed-over UNIX" workstations aren't as successful a business as chav trousers.

Apple 'fesses up: We broke App Store downloads

"We don't expect it to occur again."

I wonder why they added that. Do they have some processes that fix bugs in such a way that they _do_ expect them to recur?

Mobile app privacy: You get what you pay for

Re: One small change..

I think _could_, rather than should. There will be some apps that are basically non-functional without access to some personal info. Imagine installing a turn-by-turn nav app without giving it location access.

Re: One small change..

That's exactly what I'd like to achieve. I want to move us to a world where app makers say "we've got this feature, we need this data to make the feature work, and we only use it for enabling that feature".

HSBC pinpoints branches with sub-atomic accuracy

Accuracy != precision

Their numbers are certainly very _precise_, but probably not as _accurate_ as El Reg claims. Particularly as they don't actually know where I am with sufficient accuracy, even if they did know the location of their branches to the nearest gnat's quark.

Mine's the anorak.

Google guru blasts Android virus doomsayers as 'charlatans'

Size matters not, the only difference is in your mind

"Talk of exponential malware growth is justified but needs to be put into context, that the huge rise is coming from a base of almost nothing and that the raw figures remain trivial compared to the Windows virus plague."

That's true, but not really relevant: you only need to be infected by one strain for it to ruin your day.

Tux - but only after he gets his shots.

Second-hand E-m@iler spews old emails, passwords

I have one of those already.

It was for charity! Think of the children!

Faces of the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 revealed

Fat-fingering

"If this is the design for the iPhone 5, could such a grip be a problem?"

Just avoid holding it in that way. Not that big of a deal.

The Mac that saved Apple (and Steve Jobs)

No, Virginia...

At the time when you say all optical drives were slot-loading, I had a caddy-loading drive (plugged into a SquirrelSCSI adaptor on an Amiga 1200, which itself had a stack of 2p coins on top to address a "thermal surfeisance" issue).

Apple throws a wobbly over Steve Jobs dolly

How about...

Licensing Noah Wyle's image for an action doll. I would suggest using his performance in Pirates of Silicon Valley as the model.

/my coat wouldn't fit John Di Maggio

BOFH: Little ups and downs

Nearby lifts

I've worked in a couple of multi-story buildings around Oxford, UK, and been in many others. Many of the elevators are made by a company called....Schindler's Lifts. No joke.

Philip K. Dick's kid howls over Googlephone handle

Sir Tim

Tim Berners-Lee should get in on the litigation, too. His NeXTSTEP-based browser, WorldWideWeb.app, was renamed to Nexus.app. Android phones include a web browser, so Google are clearly trying to incite confusion in the marketplace.

Mine's the one with the grey beard.

To iterate is human

Higher-order messaging

In response to the comments on the NeXT NSEnumerator class, that in itself is not the Enumeration approach but it's certainly simple to achieve in Objective-C; the technique seems to have received the sobriquet "Higher-Order Messaging". Certainly searching cocoadev.com for HOM yields a few examples of the style.

Windows on Mac: BootCamp vs Parallels Desktop

Repair disk permissions

Quote from the article: "Reports from folk who've tried it already suggest that it's a good idea to verify your hard drive and repair file-access permissions before running BootCamp."

Of course they did. It's part of the Mac Voodoo, that. Anyone who wants to appear knowledgeable but has no clear idea of what they're talking about will recommend one or more of: repair permissions; clearing PRAM; installing software updaters via the combo rather than incremental package. It certainly wouldn't help in this situation and almost never does at any other time, but it's part and parcel of The Mac Experience ;-)