Posts by Alan Newbury

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

One word - Chicony

Probably the best keyboards on the market back in the late eighties - early nineties

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

Re: Cars of the day... with good old steel bumpers and side panels

Similar here in Australia - just substitute "Skippy" for "Bambi"

Captain Caveman rides to the rescue, solves a prickly PowerPoint problem with a magical solution

Re: Understated..

A use for lettuce leaves? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

Texas Instruments

I remember working on a TI-990 back in 1981 in London. A couple of the error messages were a little obscure ("Shut her down, Clancy, she's a pumpin' mud")

Behold Schrödinger's Y2K, when software went all quantum

Re: I found a Y2K bug a few years ago

In my (very extensive) experience, IT and comedy are frequently the same thing.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

Re: Pedant alert

Australia has a similar system. If the lights are blinking amber, treat the intersection as a roundabout

Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers

Re: Design deficiencies

One other reason for basement installation (I'm going back to the 70s here) is that it was the only floor capable of supporting the weight. Icon for what the other floors would do if subjected to an ICL 1900 and associated tape drives and printers.

CIMON says: Say hello to your new AI pal-bot, space station 'nauts

No, but it has an NVIDIA card running a General Personality Unit...

We already give up our privacy to use phones, why not with cars too?

Re: Finance figures are a bit scary

Last time I tried that I read through the fine print first. Minimum loan term was 12 months and, if I paid it off earlier, I was slugged with an early termination fee 10% higher than the 12 months interest :(

EasyJet: We'll have electric airliners within the next decade

"I can't hear the port engine"

"Hang on, I'll just open the window..."

Don't gripe if you hand your PC to Geek Squad and they rat you out to the Feds – judge

Re: Given that the data could only have been obtained

"perhaps they should drop the "I" in their acronym." - I don't know, Federal Bureau of Incrimination works for me

If we can't fix this printer tonight, the bank's core app will stop working

Re: Some time ago... @ShortLegs

"Some people claim also to have blocked cut holes by carefully placing a 'chad' (the cut out rectangle of card) into a hole to 'edit' a card, but I'm a bit sceptical myself."

It's true - we used to do it occasionally (but only for single use decks). Put the chad back in and then go over it with pencil - compressed the card slightly to get a nice tight fit and supposedly filled in any gaps with graphite - Oh the things we used to do in the 70s.

Google's 'fair use' mass slurping of books can continue – US Supremes snub writers' pleas

Re: Now Google has won

And, one by one, the stars will go out.

Apps that 'listen in' to your mobile get slapped by US watchdog

Re: Siri and Cortana

Probably true - after all, Apple doesn't let you wander out of its own little walled garden, so it already knows what you're going to visit i.e. what it lets you.

Why does herbal cough syrup work so well? It may be full of morphine

Re: Kaolin and Morphine anyone ?

Remember being dosed with that as a child...

Late night server rebuild led to 'nightmares about mutilated corpses'

File Deletions

We had a sysadmin like that - if a file hadn't been accessed for 3 months he'd rename it. If no-one complained after a further 3 months it was deleted (personal data files only, no.exes or source code).

We had a sysadmin like that - if a file hadn't been accessed for 3 months he'd rename it. If no-one complained after a further 3 months it was deleted (personal data files only, no.exes or source code).

BUZZKILL. Honeybees are dying in DROVES - and here's a reason why

Re: Simon uses bees to make cosmetics.

Yum. Mushy bees

Hillary Clinton draws flak for using personal email at State Dept

Or Sue, Grabbit and Runne (Thanks Private Eye)

Australian ISPs agree to three-strikes-plus-court-order anti-piracy plan

Re: To State The Obvious...

Sorry, I live in Australia. What is this 'Netflix' of which you speak?

Oz carrier Tiger Air takes terror alerts to new heights

Re: Tiger Air has been blacklisted

I had the misfortune to fly with them once - believe me, in my mind they are permanently blacklisted.

Australia's metadata debate is an utter shambles

Privacy still (relatively) safeguarded

Latest from the ABC:

"The Prime Minister's office later clarified that web-browsing history is considered content, and authorities need a warrant to access it."

So carry on regardless with your huge-prickly-prober

How Brit computer maker beat IBM's S/360 - and Soviet spies

Re: Blue sleeves?

'a long-haired "hippy" from the darkest depths of their technical department' - I had that role in a medium-sized Australian hardware supplier once upon a time...

Wheels literally FALL OFF solar race contender

It's somewhere between "Ouch - the roof of the car's hot" and "Someone get the bandages - I touched the car roof" (in the range 40 - 45 C in the shade - not uncommon in Central and South Australia)

Climate change made sea levels fall in 2010 and 2011

Re: Will that water stay in Australia?

"Or get made into Fosters"

Nope - we're not going to export it (no-one in Australia drinks Fosters - unless they're European backpackers).

What do you mean WHY is Sony PS4 so pricey in Oz?

Re: @Mad Mike

Got it in one

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

Actually, Start8 from Stardock can be configured to have TIFKAM as a menu option, so yes, it does work with it . You can also add TIFKAM applications to the start menu - you click it, it runs full screen and when you close it you return to the desktop. Best of all worlds really.

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

Re: FFS

Actually, in a couple of buildings where I have worked, there has been a 13th floor, but it was designed and used for utilities (air-con, telecoms, power distribution etc) so couldn't have been let out even if the owner wanted to.

Wind now cheaper than coal in Oz: Bloomberg

While I agree with the thrust of your comment, it must be pointed out that greens in general believe

1) Nuclear power is much too dangerous and the waste problem will kill us all. Therefore it has no place on a green grid

2) Hydro requires dams which will (a) flood wilderness areas inhabited by endangered species and (b) regulate the downstream flow, removing the 'natural' flooding and drought, again endangering the ecology.

So, while it makes sense to use nuclear and hydro, all the while the Australian government is in the pocket of the Watermelon party (green on the outside, red in the middle) it will never happen.

Pubic louse falls victim to eager Brazilian strippers

Re: Interesting stats...

South East Asia is not only close, but cheap to access as well...

Brit robojet ‘Taranis’ set for Oz test flight

Re: Jindalee

"but I suggest they don't park or fly it near the Ettamoga Pub"

About time they changed that ute on the roof

Warner recalls Xbox Lego Lord of the Rings 'demo' discs

No firs around here

Would a nice pine do instead?

Apple bans 'memory' games from iOS App Store

Re: wow

So... I can market a game called 'Monopoly' in the US? After all, it's a common word...

Portugal’s prosecutor punts P2P case

Pot, meet Kettle

"and their interest is not having to send 2,000 letters, hear 2,000 people and investigate 2,000 computers,”

So, why don't APACOR just start 2000 civil copyright infringement lawsuits against 2000 account holders and send out 2000 'settlement' letters? Or can't they be bothered either?

The Register lands in Australia

Re: You missed the point.

You can't be 'The Rego' - that's the sticker on my car's windshield...

All you need to know about nano SIMs - before they are EXTERMINATED

Re: Blue US Robotics Sportster....

Remember the TI Silent 700? Thermal printing terminal with a 300 baud acoustic coupler.

Did a lot of remote system updates on one of those...

(Icon is close to an acoustic coupler...)

Mars rover harangues empty landscape with loudhailer

Re: Uh-huh

Iron Sky?

News Ltd's Australian chief demands copyright overhaul

Re: Money is not lost from the economy

In the vast majority of cases, it IS being lost from the economy - the US economy

Surface: Because Microsoft does so well making hardware?

Re: "OEMs, please pay attention. This is how you build a PC.”

Stylus - the difference between drawing and finger-painting

Council chief overrules blackout on Scots 9-yr-old's school lunch blog!

Re: £2 a day

As an Australian, I have to point out that the spoon is optional

'Six-eyed' robot to tour National Museum of Australia

Re: Five or six?

Number six is a dummy - which implies Number 5 is Alive

RFID drives the self-service pub

Aussie Backpackers

Go to a London pub and see who's behind the bar...

Back to gaslight, coal and steam power - it's the future

@Scott

Only as much as in the mining, transportation and 'coking' of coal...

How languages can live together without killing each other

Yes, Strine

Too bloody right, cobber

First 'cryovolcano' discovered on Titan, ice moon of Saturn

Sort-of New

Astronomers have been talking about them for years, but this is the first real candidate discovered.

Email protected by Fourth Amendment, says appeals court

@AC @Lars

"sentance"?????

Dirty PCs: How much filth can you take?

Hoover the Cats?

Actually one of our old cats really enjoyed a quick vacuuming - and it kept the fur to a manageable level (he was a long-haired).

Google data center links shot down by 'bored' riflemen

300 A/C

Wasn't a TI Silent 700 thermal-paper terminal was it?

Megaphone 'cos my hearing's starting to go these days...

Godly Aussie MP accused of being online 'smut' junkie

Certainly not all

Add to that that you get one 'porn' hit for the front page and another 'porn' hit for every story that you go to - and yet another when you leave that story and return to the home page.

At that rate I'd have about 40 from work today just going through the tech sections in various news.com publications.

Best Buy slaps 'God Squad' priest with cease-and-desist order

Yes, let's kill the lawyers

because after looking at the way the law is mangled and degraded by some of these 'people', it is probably the best option.

(other than taking off and nuking them from orbit)