* Posts by Roger Greenwood

1068 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2006

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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.... :-)

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Roger Greenwood

Wired had the article about Kytch a while ago, as you say pretty dark...

https://www.wired.com/story/kytch-ice-cream-machine-hackers-sue-mcdonalds-900-million/

Orkney islands look to drones to streamline mail deliveries

Roger Greenwood

Re: Yeah, bad weather is a problem

"I mean, before buying a fleet of those things, preferably."

Orkney is one of the most monitored places in the UK for windspeeds, having been the trial location for many experimental wind turbines over the last 40 years and more. So yes, hopefully someone had a glance at some records.

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

Roger Greenwood

Tracking...

.. sometimes is useful. Example, I can be watching a youtube video on one computer and have to stop. Later I can fire up another computer, fire up youtube and press play, it carries on from the same place. Amazing to many, and relies on all the tracking stuff. Obviously not all will want or agree with this, but I think many users do and it gives them a benefit. The rest of us have ways of turning it off at the moment.....

My wish list for browsers would include better methods to enable more users to spot dodgy websites not the other way around as this seems to propose.

Goodbye Azure AD, Entra the drag on your time and money

Roger Greenwood

Press <enter> to continue

or did you mean press <return>?

The smallest names matter, and it costs (in many ways) to change. Great article.

Free Wednesday gift for you lucky lot: Extra mouse button!

Roger Greenwood

In some cases e.g. CAD...

..then wheel is dynamic zoom, press and hold wheel is dynamic pan. I use this quite often.

Also in some browsers, press and hold wheel is dynamic scroll (usually just up and down), but speed is variable depending how far you move from the point of press. Also has it's uses. I am always disappointed when it doesn't work in some applications.

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

Roger Greenwood
Thumb Up

Re: "...local radio hams to dig themselves out from their cellars..."

Yes indeed, that resonates with me. Have a standing wave....

Roger Greenwood

"...local radio hams to dig themselves out from their cellars..."

Actually we have man caves now. Don't bother ringing Thursday, I will be doing "mindfulness" (cataloging my resistor collection).

UK's dream of fusion power by 2040s will need GPUs

Roger Greenwood

No wind tunnels any more?

all in CFD:-

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/26/ukri_research_funds/

Could someone be over egging it a bit or is left and right hand not connected?

Virgin Media email customers enter third day of inbox infuriation

Roger Greenwood

Re: VM reply:

Is that answer part of the circular economy we are all supposed to join?

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

Roger Greenwood
FAIL

"..it was "confident" it would meet the new smart meter rollout date.."

4 years later I am just as confident that they will not meet the rollout date. Quick - change the goalposts!

So many problems with this scheme, many as described in the article. I think most folks by now will have either direct or indirect (bad) experience so it's not going to get quicker.

I know personally folks who have been cut off by their own meter (software error - network oops) and many where the smart meters have gone dumb. I am just waiting for the network hack to take out a whole load in one go.

Meanwhile we are paying for this in our bills, like it or not.

Clippy designer was too embarrassed to include him in his portfolio

Roger Greenwood

Nuke it from space....

...it's the only way to be sure.

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Roger Greenwood

Re: Bouncing checks

Did you mean this Bouncing Czech? https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/robert-maxwell-legacy-of-the-bouncing-czech/35131452.html

India official fined after draining reservoir to recover phone

Roger Greenwood

At least he fished it out in the end....

... and made a rod for his own back

Experimental brain-spine computer interface helped a paralyzed man walk

Roger Greenwood
Pint

Re: Awesome!

I heard him being interviewed yesterday on the radio, and he specifically mentioned having a beer with his friends (stood up) was a great joy. I would also like to share a beer with all those involved, incredible achievement.

Microsoft enables booting physical PCs directly into cloud PCs

Roger Greenwood

"creatively monikered"

You mispelled "optimistic"

Parent discovers the cost of ignoring Roblox: £2,500 and heart palpitations

Roger Greenwood

No. We don't have enough digits on our calculators:-"0.1315789473684211 monster trucks". 1/8 of a truck is close enough anyway.

NHS England spends £8M to extend Microsoft deals by a month

Roger Greenwood

Re: Long Term Solution

@bo111 - some of us have exactly the opposite experience! Who would have thought it.....

Google's AI chatbot Bard catches up to generating code

Roger Greenwood

Slicer - Dicer

Not sure that is a good name to be near "clinicians"....

Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar

Roger Greenwood

Re: Perspective

Makes you think. I was learning to program a Texas 5Ti PLC at my first job. Getting it wrong meant throwing another 1K Prom away at extortionate cost as I remember.

More ads in Windows 11 Start Menu could be last straw for some

Roger Greenwood

Re: Win 10 forever

Yeah but you said that with Win 7.....

Arm, Intel make it easier to churn out Arm SoCs from Intel fabs

Roger Greenwood

Re: "optimized for power, performance, area and cost"

any 5

Salesforce lets go of more of its towering presence in San Francisco

Roger Greenwood

Second time today ...

that Salesforce has come to my attention. First one was some phishing spam. Obvious as it was a new domain but they used a Salesforce account to send it, lending it some legitimacy with the email servers along the way. I guess my report to them will not be read ...

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

Roger Greenwood

Did you mean Virgin Obit?

Japanese outfit's private Moon mission enters Lunar orbit

Roger Greenwood

Re: Wish there were more info on the transfer orbit

This is the kind of comment that ChatGPT may be able to produce one day. But not today, thank goodness.

Europe's right-to-repair law asks hardware makers for fixes for up to 10 years

Roger Greenwood

Re: A good start, but ...

and at true end of life, the full schematics should be released. Once upon a time most electronics came with those when new. At least just go back a bit and release them once they go out of mainstream use.

AWS wants to cook its datacenter chips with vegetable oil

Roger Greenwood

If you want your diesel backup generator to be reliable, then you test it frequently. For a typical modern turbo diesel that means every month, for an hour, on load, just like your car. Proper data centres will have a dummy load switched in/connected for this purpose in one form or another, hospitals maybe not as they aren't so important (cynical, moi?). I like to think the staff running this routine with veg oil will have it on the schedule as "frying tonight" (with Keneth Williams voice).

As that is only a small amount of fuel used, the bulk storage tank will need to be refreshed to stop it, as pointed out, going all "gunky". Get your diesel polished regularly.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

Roger Greenwood

They might believe it if they try to visit Japan. Visitors from UK on Three network:- £2/min for calls + £3/MB for data.

Microsoft's Copilot AI to pervade the whole 365 suite

Roger Greenwood

Re: Huh?

Because it made more sense

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

Roger Greenwood
Go

I hope ...

... there will be an option to turn it off, I don't want my driving tape interrupted for anything (yes I am that old).

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