* Posts by Roger Greenwood

1097 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2006

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Ireland's AI minister has never used ChatGPT but swears she'll learn fast

Roger Greenwood

Re: Normal

Ed Milliwatt, I like it. Real nerds may also know him as Ed 0dBm

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Roger Greenwood
Coat

Grok

I know that English is a wonderfully flexible language and that meanings change over time, but I am sorry that this particular word has changed so much in only 64 years. The article could have said "noticed" and most would understand.

Example of one version of the original definition:- "Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed – to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience."

My coat? The one with "grumpy old man" on the back.... ;-)

Absolute Linux has reached the end – where to next?

Roger Greenwood

Re: I'm old enough to remember

"There is a good chance that was from PC Pro magazine... And I helped put that together, and I wrote the accompanying 2 part feature."

There is more than a good chance Liam, and I am still a subscriber, mainly for the real world stories at the back. Anyway thanks, it has been my main OS at home since those days.

Roger Greenwood

Re: I'm old enough to remember

Happy Days. I just checked and I think my first distro was SuSE 5.2, late 90s, which came free on a magazine cover. Can't remember the hardware now, but as with every computer since there never seems to be enough memory or disk space - even today!

Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

Roger Greenwood
Mushroom

Re: In other news.....

Could have been worse for the criminals, it could have been mossad putting something in the phone .....

Canada passes new right to repair rules with the same old problem

Roger Greenwood

Re: Follow the money ..

I wonder where they got that idea?

Judith : [on Stan's desire to be a mother] Here! I've got an idea: Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb - which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans' - but that he can have the *right* to have babies.

Francis : Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother... sister, sorry.

Reg : What's the *point*?

Francis : What?

Reg : What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?

Francis : It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

Reg : It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.

(Life of Brian, 1979)

New Jersey man admits shipping sanctions-busting tech to Russia

Roger Greenwood

" ..military-grade spectrum analyzer."

Can he get me one? Asking for a friend.

Skyscraper-high sewage plume erupts in Moscow

Roger Greenwood

Re: Thames Water

Well the alternative (when overloaded or blocked) was to let it flow down the street so I think those victorian engineers knew what they were doing. We may not like it today, but it is working as designed. As in Russia maybe we could have spent a little more time upgrading in recent decades.....

BBS legend Ward Christensen logs off for last time at 78

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Re: Good memories

We used to dream of 14.4k, in our day it was 300 baud or 1200/75 if you were lucky. Tell that to the kids today and they won't believe it.

(Pint for all those involved who made it work)

Wanna watch a movie? Sure! Lemme just park the lounge room

Roger Greenwood

Boxy vehicles

Most of the ones in Tokyo already look like that on the outside, you just don't see so many in other places (yet).

A last look at the Living Computers museum before collection heads to auction

Roger Greenwood

"The difference between a basic shampoo and dish soap is the coloring and scent for the most part."

I keep saying "it's just soap" when referring to many cleaning products and am then corrected every time due to the huge difference in price. Marketing:- you won this one.

Yes I have worked in a soap factory, very slippery underfoot.

CrowdStrike president cheered after accepting 'Epic Fail' Pwnie award

Roger Greenwood

Re: This workplace has been incident free for X days

We used to have a "purple plunger of doom", awarded to the last person to fsck it up (3ft handle, plunger on the end). No one wants to work next to that for long.

We also used to have a huge clock, about 2ft diameter, awarded to the last one who was late for work. These things are jokey ways to keep people focussed and at least aware of consequences so I hope it works for him.

Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo

Roger Greenwood

Excellent name

Who says computers can't be fun.

Some decades ago (college course) we were introduced to various project/programming/data analysis methodologies e.g top down, bottom up, JSP (Jackson Structured Programming) etc etc. Our lecturer was real old school so he also told us about the one method we really needed to learn and would always find a use for:- JFDI. Still use it today.

Japan stops measuring train crowding by ease of newspaper readership

Roger Greenwood

Podcast level

When you can hear the podcast from the ear of a fellow traveller better than your own.... (and yes it's 2 techbros talking bollocks drowning out Marina Hyde)

How tech went from free love to pay-per-day

Roger Greenwood

"...and if there's any way to get it back again."

Such a good line.

The answer of course is that the cost/ease of retrieval is directly proportional to the importance of the data.

Unless you want stuff to remain a secret, then it will become public knowledge a few seconds after typing/copying/saving etc.

50 launches, 1 knighthood – Rocket Lab CEO talks heavy-lift rockets, Venus, and Musk

Roger Greenwood

Re: balance?

Usually industrial scale oxygen is a by-product of nitrogen production, so they tend to go together e.g. chemical industries, ammonia etc. Very energy intensive as well. Yes I worked at ICI some decades ago.

High-flying drones on a leash could blow traditional wind turbines away

Roger Greenwood

Re: Seen from a pilot's point of view....

Around here (within sight of Emley), modellers normally only fly with line of sight on relatively clear days. Hang gliders similar, some launch from the same hill as Holme Moss mast or other hills around but don't normally go cross country. The nearby airfield (Crossland Moor, also known as Huddersfield International Airport) handles larger light aircraft but they look at the maps as pointed out above. Balloons pass by occasionally, but again on calm clear days. None of the above should be flying at night, and we are pretty much smack on the approach to MAN and sometimes LBA so there are various other limits. A large, well known, static mast is the least of your worries.

ASUS creates a substance: Ceraluminum, which fuses aluminum and a ceramic

Roger Greenwood

Re: Marketing

By definition half the world is below average on lots of measures, including resistance to bullshit marketing (I work with some). But they still have money to spend and are a valuable part of society. The rest of us (ahem) may make different choices, but we are in the minority and we probably spend less on consumer goods anyway.

The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Saturn Launch Umbilical Tower

Well played for a kids toy Lego, well played.

Bill advances to exonerate hundreds in Post Office Horizon scandal

Roger Greenwood

The latest computer weekly article (Tuesday I think) is a great read. Go find it.

Tech industry sheds some light on the planet's situation via LinkedIn

Roger Greenwood

We are doing our bit, the printer ran out of ink today so we are printing less scrap paper. The time saved is probably being spent booking next year's holiday. Lovely article, thanks.

Oracle Fusion rollout costs 15 times council's estimates in SAP rip-'n-replace

Roger Greenwood

Re: Reality

It got a bit complicated in the 90s. A friend worked for a local council (computing dept), at one point they were running 3 very separate systems to do the same thing:- Old rates + business rates (tax on property), council tax (which replaced rates and was applied individually to every adult), new rates system when council tax was dumped. They all had to run in parallel for many years due to non-payers and those in arrears. Anyway it kept him busy.

Elon Musk's latest brainfart is to turn Tesla cars into AWS on wheels

Roger Greenwood

The distributed computing thing was solved a while ago, as you say for research it's a good fit. I have some machines (which have to be on all the time) running Boinc even today.

Miles of optical fiber crafted aboard ISS marks manufacturing first

Roger Greenwood

Hang on, why don't they just dig down to the centre of the earth which also must have zero gravity and make it there? Do I have to think of everything?

Techie saved the day and was then criticized for the fix

Roger Greenwood

Re: Locks.

Agree, essential skill. At the apprentice training centre one of the firtst things you made was your own toolbox. You then got to padlock it to keep your tools safe. Next skill was picking locks so you could nick tools from other apprentices, or, in the case of one imaginative oik, open the box, fill it with hydraulic oil, refit lock leaving no trace.

German state ditches Windows, Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice

Roger Greenwood

Re: Desktop OSs are so passé

Collaboration is very important. 20 years ago (small business) we started using a feature in excel where a spreadsheet could be shared. It worked ok but was always flaky and when it crashed we had to shut down the app on all machines and restart. Sometimes that didn't work so we had to round trip the shared file through openoffice (which removed the crud). We could live with this as it only happened every few weeks but the file was used constantly by several people in different parts of the building. Then we discovered google sheets and have used that since without problem. Businesses generally don't care what the app is called or who owns it, we just want it to work! Libreoffice has been working on this feature I believe but I don't think it is there yet. Big business will have a "proper" solution perhaps, involving databases and stuff, when many just need something simple to share.

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Re: Genius

Prost!

UN: E-waste is growing 5x faster than it can be recycled

Roger Greenwood

Re: Perspective

"spilling trade secrets"

Good point, I assume that most manufacturers use existing designs to make the next one, so releasing ALL the details of any product even if obsolete would be a leap too far for many, especially where software is involved. I think they should, but I like tinkering with stuff. Perhaps after some years of going EOL but defining that is going to be a challenge.

Catch Java 22, available from Oracle for a limited time

Roger Greenwood

I came here for the catch 22 puns and quotes

and have been disappointed so far.

'That's some catch, that catch-22,' he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed."

Windows 10 failing to patch properly? You are most definitely not alone

Roger Greenwood

Re: KB5001716? Again!?!?!

Wow, what a pain!

Makes me think of the phrase told to me many years ago "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom". Some things are just not worth it.

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

Roger Greenwood

Lets have some music in here Boiler

Persistent memory to replace DRAM, but it could take a decade

Roger Greenwood

Have a look at the CuriousMarc channel on youtube - they are doing their best (Mike just recovered a load of code from core rope memory).

Fascinating to follow the story and all the history behind 60s tech.

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

Roger Greenwood
Stop

Re: Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

We regularly get phone calls which start "I've just sent you an email"......

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Few are going to get that reference, but I am not crabby about it.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

Roger Greenwood

Re: Explain again to me

Floppy! Ha, paper tape with G-codes anyone?

We have 2 machines with floppys, 1 with USB so yes they have a long life. They do get more difficult to maintain as they get older. One machine had a hard disc fail (IDE) and we were quoted over £500 for a replacement. I found a few in an old cupboard (one of which which we used) and the engineer then told me to hang on to them as they were getting like unicorn droppings (very rare and hard to find).

Roger Greenwood

Re: Explain again to me

"..controllers for $100k CNC machines"

Yup, we just got a new machine for that sort of money (last month). Briefly during boot up, before the custom screen appears there is a windows splash screen. You can connect these things to the network (and are recommended to do so by the manufacturers), many do, we don't.

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will fly no more, but is still standing upright

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Well I'm smiling because it happened. Bit of dust around though.... Pint for all involved.

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

Roger Greenwood

Re: How many fraud and theft cases in the 80s?

"How did anyone at the post office believe that there was theft going on at 30% of their sub-post offices?"

Because Horizon said it was less than 1%

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

Roger Greenwood

"shipping the pellets to the UK in diesel-powered ships"

And then transferring to a diesel engine train across to the power station at Drax. Yes I work near a rail line and those trains go past every day.

HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems

Roger Greenwood

Old printers never die

On a new machine here (win11), with all new applications installed, as soon as I opened an old file I noticed an old printer driver was installed. This machine had gone to recycling long ago, but I assume because the old file had a record of which printer was last used, the OS decided to install the driver (yes it was an HP). I can't see a good reason for this unless you actually try to print it. I have removed it, but it keeps re-appearing so now it will live on, forever reminding us how far we have come in printer driver management, oh hang on....

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

Roger Greenwood

Microsoft announces version 12 will be called "Windows Dozen", shortened to WinDoze

Tool bag lost in space now tracked by garbage watchers

Roger Greenwood

"A tool bag is orbiting Earth. No, this isn't an elaborate Elon Musk joke."

It is now.

Great article, thanks.

Boffins detect direct evidence of atomic oxygen on Venus's day side

Roger Greenwood

They can't send a Boeing any more either, it's retired:-

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/nasa-partner-decide-to-conclude-sofia-mission/

Shock horror – and there goes the network neighborhood

Roger Greenwood

"bloody clamp meter"

Trickier on DC though.....

Want a clean energy transition? Better start putting cash into electrical grid

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Re: One more strategy,,,,

"How about putting renewable power generation near the demand?"

It is happening with a lot of UK industry, mainly solar of course. Most UK water companies have the space to do it (and they are) and of course have a constant demand.

In years gone by a lot of water was pumped overnight (to fill service reservoirs) as the 'leccy was cheaper and the MD (maximum demand) limit higher. Today more can be done during the day when the sun shines - shifting water around uses a lot of energy.

Icon is 95% water.

Japan cruises ahead with drive-thru EV charging trial

Roger Greenwood

Wow

I make that about 72kW (very rough numbers), quite a rate of charge to achieve with no wires. Must be some strong magnetic fields involved.

Mars helicopter to try for new speed record on Thursday

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Re: Cool

Didn't you forget something?

It's time to celebrate the abysmal efforts to go paperless in the NHS

Roger Greenwood

Records

Just in case anyone has no idea how that much money could be spent on paper records, here is one answer:-

A large city centre hospital near me has no space left on site so they have a separate secure facility a few miles away, sort of an industrial estate type building. A fleet of vans, and a team of people, go back and forth 24/7 to send/retrieve patient records. How anyone thought this was cost effective/efficient/timely as the hospital expanded over the decades is hard to fathom, but here we are and hopefully their digitization process is a little more advanced than some.

UK splashes £4B to dive into next-gen nuclear submarines

Roger Greenwood

Re: £4bn here, £4bn there...

You could get a couple of miles of HS2 track for that!

Arm's lawyers want to check assembly expert's book for trademark missteps

Roger Greenwood

Re: ARM are wankers

I hope you are correct in your review as I have just ordered a copy. After all it will shortly be a collectors item.... :-)

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