Re: And in the next release ...
Hey, don't forget the 1K ZX-81 - I'm sure they can fit it in!
Posts by DJV
2539 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009
Page:
Release the pressure: Win16 support arrives for version 3.2 of Free Pascal
What's the Arm? First Apple laptop to ditch Intel will be 13.3" MacBook Pro, proclaims reliable soothsayer
Monday 22nd June 2020 17:28 GMT 
Round things
Ah yes. That brings back fond* memories of the original iMac puck mouse - so gloriously round that it didn't matter which way you grabbed it, it always seemed to move the mouse cursor in an unexpected direction!
Also, I fully agree that holding balls in your hand is easy and comfortable - though, for some reason, the staff in Marks & Sparks take a completely opposite point of view...
* for negative quantities of "fondness", of course!
If you're despairing at staff sharing admin passwords, look on the bright side. That's CIA-grade security
Meet the dog that's all byte and no bark: Boston Dynamics touts robo-pooch Spot with $75k-a-pop price tag
Microsoft disbands three-ring Windows Insider circus and replaces it with 'channels'
Not so nice, we investigated them twice: EU opens double whammy of inquiries into Apple's biz practices
Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft
GitHub to replace master with main across its services
Overload: A one-way ticket to a madman's situation
Monday 15th June 2020 12:19 GMT
1992 and "Email was an interesting new 'thing' on the internet"
Hmm, someone needs a history lesson! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email
Bloke rolls up to KFC drive-thru riding horse-drawn cart only to be told: Neigh
After IBM axed its face-recog tech, the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards: Amazon and now Microsoft. Checkmate
City of London Corporation explores options to escape Oracle's clutches
OOP there it is: You'd think JavaScript's used more by devs than Java... but it's not – JetBrains survey
What could possibly make a cranky crocodylomorph more terrifying? How about one that chases you on its hind legs?
You know Facebook has an image problem when major nonprofits start turning down donations over political lies
Thought you'd addressed those data-leaking Spectre holes on Linux? Guess again. The patches aren't perfect
MacOS on Arm talk intensifies: Just weeks from now, Apple to serve up quarantini with Kalamata golive, reportedly
Researchers unmask Indian 'infosec' firm to reveal hacker-for-hire op that targeted pretty much anyone clients wanted
25 years of PHP: The personal web tools that ended up everywhere
Monday 8th June 2020 17:35 GMT
Re: Thanks Rasmus!
Same here - I was struggling trying to get something working in (Mod-)Perl back in 2000 for the company I worked for at the time. Then my company sent me to the Apache conference in London later that year. At first I went to some Perl and Mod-Perl sessions. Both had low attendance and had people complaining about things that just didn't work - it was all pretty negative. Then I went to a PHP session to find it packed and full of positivity. Upon returning home I ditched (Mod-)Perl, rewrote everything in PHP and it worked! Haven't looked back since!
Yes, there are plenty of ways of doing it wrong in PHP (the way WordPress has been coded being one of them in my opinion - awaits the downvotes!) but doing it right and doing it efficiently is also extremely possible in PHP as well.
Yet another beefy BSOD spotted lurking within the walls of US patty pusher
Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it
Monday 8th June 2020 12:43 GMT
Re: There is a reason for test systems
Absolutely.
Back in the 1980s I was working in a company that was using Unisys kit (actually rebadged Convergent Technology systems) running CTOS. These could be "clustered" together into small networks. Downstairs, the boss and admin staff used a system that consisted of a network consisting of a master computer, with the hard disks attached, and two or three networked slave machines. Upstairs, each developer had a single computer but one developer (let's call him Derek, mainly because that was his name) had quite a powerful system.
When the downstairs master computer had a problem the boss decided that Derek's computer would have to act as the master computer for a while. Derek did warn them that, in the process of developing software, it was possible that we would often crash the computers, but the boss wasn't deterred. Derek had also discovered (via the CTOS API manuals) that there was a system call that forced a deliberate crash. He wrote a small program to call that API and every so often, when he was bored or whatever, would whisper to the rest of the developers (who were safely isolated on their own systems) something like, "Listen for the shouts downstairs." Then he'd run the program to crash the network resulting in cries of anguish below. He'd then shout out something like, "Sorry, but I did warn you that we often cause crashes."
It didn't take too long before a new spare computer was made available and Derek's system became disconnected from downstairs again.
Kinda goes without saying, but shore up your admin passwords or be borged by this brute-forcing botnet
Saturday 6th June 2020 20:10 GMT
Re: IP blacklist
Yes, there is. One of the sites I administer was getting repeated attacks (lots trying Wordpress logins and the site isn't Wordpress, others trying SQL injections). I developed some code in PHP that recognised lots of the common attacks and, if found, added "Deny from [IP]" to the .htaccess file so they can no longer get access and then calls die() with a message that basically tells them to sod off!
It could be 'five to ten years' before the world finally drags itself away from IPv4
Google+ replacement ‘Currents’ to end beta and debut in G Suite on July 6th
Friday 5th June 2020 15:23 GMT
Re: I've lost count of the number of "chat" platforms they've killed off
There are people counting those and everything else Google kills: https://killedbygoogle.com
No more installing Microsoft's Chromium-centered Edge by hand: Windows 10 will do it for you automatically
Thursday 4th June 2020 22:21 GMT
Re: Déja Vu
I seem to remember that Internet Explorer (probably version 2 or 3) running on Windows 3.1(1) would keel over and die after a period of web activity due to how (memory) leaky it was. Thankfully the place at which I was working at the time was replacing 3.1 with 95. Of course, then IE4 came along and screwed everything up once more with the infamous "active desktop".
If you bought a CRT monitor, TV 13+ years ago, hold on a little longer, there may be a small check for you
Fresh cup of WTF with lunch? TeamViewer's big in Twitter's domination-as-a-service scene
Western Digital shingled out in lawsuit for sneaking RAID-unfriendly tech into drives for RAID arrays
Black horse down: UK banking giant Lloyds suffers an online wobble
After 30 years of searching, astroboffins finally detect the universe's 'missing matter' – using fast radio bursts
Software bug in Bombardier airliner made planes turn the wrong way
Consumer hardware shipments forecast to drop 14% for 2020, but hey, it could be worse, says Gartner
Linus Torvalds drops Intel and adopts 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper on personal PC
Forget BYOD, this is BYOVM: Ransomware tries to evade antivirus by hiding in a virtual machine on infected systems
Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook
The longest card game in the world: Microsoft Solitaire is 30
Friday 22nd May 2020 16:07 GMT
I'm glad to say...
...that the best version, the one that came with XP, can still be run on Windows 10. I was horrified at what they did for the Vista/7 version, along with the equally crappy version of Spider. When upgrading to a later OS/PC, I always popped the XP versions on.
A quick search will show (possibly*) suitable download locations for the XP versions of both Solitaire and Spider.
* Don't blame me if the version you download comes with "unwanted extras"!
Runaway Latvian drone found meditating in tree after shutting down nation's skies
To test its security mid-pandemic, GitLab tried phishing its own work-from-home staff. 1 in 5 fell for it
Well, that's something boffins haven't seen before: A strange alien streaks around Jupiter
Friday 22nd May 2020 09:32 GMT
acronym
Yeah, back in the 1980s I worked for a company called CHIPS which, apparently, stood for Computer Harmony and Information Processing Systems (or something like that - it was a long time ago). Anyway, a few years later there was an in-house competition to come up with a better acronym. For some unknown reason the best suggestion - Company Has Inadequately Paid Staff - was never adopted and the whole idea of a new acronym fizzled out soon afterwards.
UK MPs to off-payroll workers: Delay IR35 reforms until 2023? You wish
Wednesday 20th May 2020 22:30 GMT
Re: Somebody remind me why we have government already?
They are there to claim expenses and to bolster their own income in any way they can, legal or non-legal - and if the latter, then the law apparently doesn't apply to them or, if it is found to do so, then a sympathetic judge (otherwise known as brother-in-law or similar) will dismiss any cases against them.
Corrupt? No, I definitely didn't say that (whistle, whistle).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
