Posts by Martin J Hooper

Third time is almost the charm for SpaceX's Starship

Re: Capabilities.

They had Starlink capability on both stages - Hence why we could see the amazing pictures we did...

Fedora 39 waves goodbye to modularity, but has enough spins to make your head spin

Re: I really do not get this...

Have you tried the Everything Net installer?

https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/39/Everything/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Everything-netinst-x86_64-39-1.5.iso

It downloads the packages from the mirrors before you install... That's the one I used to install and it works just fine.

Re: I really do not get this...

Liam were you running the Wayland session of F39 Plasma on Virtualbox?

I find that the Wayland session works but there is a lot of screen tearing and incompatibilities.

If you change the session to Plasma on X11 it works fine and I've had no problems with running F39 Plasma other than that.

The choice of session is right on the bottom left - It says "Plasma (Wayland)" by default.

Fears China could trash Broadcom's VMware nuptials as revenge for sanctions

Can someone explain to me why a merger between two US companies (I presume) has anything to do with the EU/UK/China??

Why does the relevant countries authorities have to have a say in things? I could understand if one of the companies were based in those countries but not why they would if the companies aren't in their country...

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

Re: Agree but...

That last line reminds me of this quote...

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Beams from brightest gamma ray burst ever seen were pointed directly at Earth

If it's pointing straight for us should we be worried about gamma rays destroying computers etc??

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

I was wondering if it was a big DDOS somewhere that I'd be hearing about later on today or when the data had been crunched...

Smile! South Korea's moon orbiter sends back first snaps of Earth

Re: 97th person

Oh crap - It's Mondas.... Cue the Cyberman invasion in 3...2...1...

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

Re: Hmmm.

The Russians are the worst at this...

https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contaminates-you/

The most contaminated area in the world - Pre-dates the Chernobyl exclusion zone too...

Juno what? Jovian moon Europa is looking rugged

Re: Roadworks

I was hoping for a 2001 reference but a War of the Worlds one will do just as well... :)

Re: Can we get the water back here?

Never thought have hitting Mars with it rather than here...

That would be a better use of said water I'm sure! How sure though are we that what happened to the original water on Mars won't happen again??

Can we get the water back here?

If there is that much more water compared to Earth can we get it back here??

I'm guessing not with the tech we have today but who knows in the future...

Be careful where you install software, and who installs it

Re: Yep

Was the filing cabinet in a basement down some stairs behind a sign saying "Beware of the Leopard" ?

Google gets the green light to flood US Gmail inboxes with political spam

I deleted my Gmail account - The account name got reverted to the email from my web hosting and Youtube and Maps still works fine without one, so go for it... :)

Akamai: We stopped record DDoS attack in Europe

I Wonder if this had ripple effects... I couldn't play some youtube videos the past couple of days the player just hung trying to stream the vid...

NYC issues super upbeat PSA for surviving the nuclear apocalypse

Alex also does a great blog about Nuclear Secrecy and other topics relating to nuclear weapons.

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/

Confirmation dialog Groundhog Day: I click OK and it keeps coming back

Re: Oh. My. God.

Young Mr Grace is Are you Being Served if I remember rightly and Number 2 was Leo McKern wasn't it?

FBI says more cyber attacks come from China than everywhere else combined

Re: Redacted......why am I not surprised?

I think the Anon Poster is talking about GCHQ - Isn't that based in Cheltenham???

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

Re: The Cossie was the rs500 sierra cosworth

I grew up in the 80s when the Sierra was being built and I loved the Cosworth and the RS500...

The normal road car Sierra's looked amazing as well.... :) Loved the posher Ghia models as well as the XR4i which I think was the predecessor sporty Sierra to the original Cosworth!

British data watchdog brings cookies to G7 meeting – pop-up consent requests, not the delicious baked treats

Re: Definition of a cookie

Firefox has I know in the latest versions or something similar. Not sure about Apple as I don't follow them not having any of their gear.

NASA doubles down on Venus missions, asking what made the planet uninhabitable

Is the reason Venus is so hot is that it's closest to the Sun? or am I getting my planets mixed up?

NASA pops old-school worm logo onto Orion spacecraft

Re: Maybe this time...

I was only 4/5 months old when Apollo 11 landed...

I'm guessing that the excitement now about Starship and Mars is how the excitement for Apollo was.

I just hope that I can watch the first Mars landing and Mars-walk...

Just wondering if the pictures from the lander will be as good as the test launches...

How do we stamp out the ransomware business model? Ban insurance payouts for one, says ex-GCHQ director

Re: Stop using MS Windows is also an option

Maybe Microsoft should be liable for their Operating System - In other words if malware got through the OS it should be Microsoft's fault...

or am I taking it a bit too far... I do think that software companies should not be able to hide their liability in their TOS/Licences...

Very little helps: Tesco serves up 3-for-1 borkage special to self-scanning Tesco shoppers

Asda

Asda have Android Hand Scanners, I can tell by some of the UI...

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

You might have that one wrong - I read somewhere that Stallman couldn't fix a bug in a printer driver back in the day because he had no source code hence he started the GNU Project...

Could be wrong though of course ;)

Software engineer leaked UK missile system secrets and refused to hand cops his passwords, Old Bailey told

Isn't the reason for that the budget cuts that have been happening over the last few years leading to less policemen and women hence the not doing anything...?

Once considered lost, ESA and NASA's SOHO came back from the brink of death to work even better than it did before

We;ve already seen that - See Star Trek the Motion Picture :)

SpaceX pulls off an incredible catch, netting both halves of its Falcon fairing as they fell Earthwards after latest launch

I only saw one half get caught - Was there another video?

Good work all round though I'd say!

Whose side you on, Nominet? Registry floods .co.uk owners with begging emails to renew unwanted .uk domains

Re: I used to pay...

https://www.34sp.com/domain-names

£7.95 per year for .co.uk and you can transfer your current .co.uk for free...

Host with them with no problems at all... No problems to change it to your current hosting...,

SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon cleared to hoist real live American astronauts into space

Thanks!!

Was going to ask what time it was BST... Cheers for that!

Rogue ADT tech spied on hundreds of customers in their homes via CCTV – including me, says teen girl

Re: And this is why I don't do cloud based access.

Synology has a camera system for their NAS's as well.

https://www.synology.com/en-uk/surveillance

Not sure if they are cloudy or not though

Microsoft doc formats are the bane of office suites on Linux, SoftMaker's Office 2021 beta may have a solution

That sounds like you would need Latex.

That's a system of taking a text file with all the text and formatting information and running through a typesetter. No matter what operating system or printer you use it will generate a pdf that is the same no matter what you use to generate it.

Microsoft pushes out fresh version of '90s throwback PowerToys suite with plenty of fixes – and one nasty bug

Re: "Make it look like Windows 7"

Directory Opus (Pro Version) is the one I use - https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

Free Software Foundation suggests Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7... as open source

Re: Happily using Linux for 20 years

Just going to leave this here for all those people who are saying GIMP doesn't use layers...

https://www.guidingtech.com/use-layers-gimp/

This isn't Boeing very well... Faulty timer knackers Starliner cargo capsule on its way to International Space Station

Is it me does anyone else think Starliner is just a scaled up Apollo?

Windows 10 Insiders: Begone, foul Store version of Notepad!

Re: Isn't this also usually followed by...

Press Escape then :q!

That's not saving the file.

Newly born Firefox 71 emerges from its den – with its own VPN and some privacy tricks

Re: Javascript

Hamburger - Customize menu item, there is a option to turn on the standard menu bar, if that's what your looking for...

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

Re: Ah the good old days

Don't remember doing thing like that but I do remember using a Ceefax/teletext emulator on Econet.

In fact I can still remember how to login on an Econet BBC...

* I AM <UserID>

Oracle demands $12K from network biz that doesn't use its software

Re: Oracle so often reminds me of an Arthur Dent quote

Isn't that Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz?

600 armed German cops storm Cyberbunker hosting biz on illegal darknet market claims

For more info on the Spamhaus DDOS - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/08/inside-the-attack-that-almost-broke-the-internet/

More info on this raid - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/09/german-cops-raid-cyberbunker-2-0-arrest-7-in-child-porn-dark-web-market-sting/

Google open sources standardized code in bid to become Mr Robots.txt

Re: That's your problem right there

Then there is the Econet Login:

*i am <user>

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Re: Radiation Leak

The Russians had a nuclear plane too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95LAL

THe US one was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H

Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

Re: About two billion years ago ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnlRZxHeTFU - At the Computer Museum in the US...

They have a complete working 1960's IBM Computer to go with it... :D

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

Here is an IBM 1401 demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQueCt114Gk

Not sure whether these were after or before the 360's but just as interesting...

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: plain black, or maybe 18% gray,

You might want to look at Fences by Stardock - Makes areas of your desktop you can put icons in. They can all shrink up to just the title bar of the Fence.

Nice way to keep clutter of your desktop even though there are tons of icons on my desktop you wouldn't know it by looking!

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Re: Back in the days

Here's what most likely happened to your CD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs7x1Hu29Wc

Slo Mo high speed CD shattering...

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: Reliability

I remember the 380Z as being the big black box shaped server in one corner of the room with a load of 480Z's attached to it.

Slow af when the whole class wanted to save at the end of the lesson...

Also remember Econet the BBC Micro network too - Still can remember how to login to that network!

Crew Dragon returns to dry land as NASA promises new space station for the Moon

> Therefore, we can strip mine the absolute buggery out of it, and no-one gives a toss

What would happen to the tides and other earth based things based on having a moon up there if we strip mined it so it changed its mass?

The first ZX Spectrum prototype laid bare... (What? It was acceptable in the '80s)

Re: I think what suprised me most...

If you watch the video the wire wrap is mostly on the underside of the board.

Re: Just use emulation

There is an up to date version of Elite now with all the graphical bells and whistles...

https://www.elitedangerous.com/