Posts by DJV

Xerox grabs $24bn from banking titans to fund hostile takeover of HP Ink

"deliver substantial synergies"

Bingo!

A Notepad nightmare leaves sysadmin with something totally unprintable

Re: Octal? You lucky bastard!

Hmm, I can think of several people who would benefit from having their butts connected using that!

Octal? You lucky bastard!

We had to do it in binary by manually soldering* wires to live or neutral as required!

* And when I say "soldering" I mean heating the solder with a cigarette lighter with the lead-based solder clamped in our teeth as we'd run out of hands!

From Soviet to science fiction icon, the weird life of Isaac Asimov 100 years on

Re: From Asimov to Zelazny

For many years my collection started with Douglas Adams, however young upstart Ben Aaronovitch has now stolen pole position. Zelazny still sits at the other end, though.

SanDisk's iXpand Wireless Charger is the unholy lovechild of a Qi mat and a flash drive

"they are wherever the pad is"

If the pad gets even slightly warm when turned on then you will find the pad underneath the cat.

This page is currency unavailable... Travelex scrubs UK homepage, kills services, knackers other sites amid 'software virus' infection

"unsecured Windows servers (also known as Windows servers)"

Excellent, I must remember that! Have a pint!

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Scissors?

You mean your carers REALLY let you use scissors, Bob?

Tut, tut. What is the world coming to!

Remembering Y2K call-outs and the joy of the hourly contractor rate

Re: 1K

So, 1K for 2K - excellent!

No Motorola Razr comeback orders in 2019: Costly foldy nostalgia mobe pulled back

Re: Peddle has hit the metal

Sad to hear he has passed on. His spats with Jack Tramiel were quite legendary back in the day.

I loved the story about him having his wife sell the 6501 chips from a jar - apparently, the ones at the bottom were all duff!

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/the-legendary-chuck-peddle-inventor-of-the-personal-computer/

A user's magnetic charm makes for a special call-out for our hapless hero

Paper tape corruption

Indeed, but, back in the 1970s, I heard a story directly from someone who experienced data corruption on a system that relied on punched paper tapes for program input. After several tapes became corrupt they finally pinned it down to a bored halfwit poking the occasional random extra hole into the tape with a sharp pointy implement.

Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

Idiocracy, can't wait for a remake

You don't have to - it's happening all around us!

I blame the parents

Yeah, make the buggers take an IQ test and full English* exam before they are allowed to procreate...

* other languages are available - see your local country for full details.

'Supporting Internet Explorer is hell': Web developers identify top needs – new survey

"use what is provided by Google, Facebook or Microsoft"

What, for "security"? Not in a million years!

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

How do you keep someone with REALLY bad memory from losing the book?

Tattoos - unless they are also prone to losing their arms and legs.

Capita unfurls new consulting arm. Hmm, what shall we call it?

"perception issues"

Is that because they themselves cannot see just what a complete bunch of useless tossers they are?

We've heard of spam filters but this is ridiculous: Pig-monkey chimeras developed in a Chinese laboratory

Re: Lots of us are chimeras

Indeed, and sometimes it causes a lot of problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Re: And this is why...

"...the lock-picking community, where skills and techniques are shared, is somewhat secretive"

Or not: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ

Don't pay off Ryuk ransomware, warn infoseccers: Its creators borked the decryptor

If you're an Oracle database user...

Poor you!

You have a choice of Larry's ransom(ware) for Oracle or Ryuk's - I'm not sure which is worse.

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

Re: From Experience (and In Hindsight)...

One of my previous PCs was an HP with a slightly recessed power button right on one of the top corners. No problem as I wasn't likely to hit it accidentally. However, HP had never reckoned on one of my cats one day deciding the top of the PC looked like a good place for a kip and, with a carefully placed back foot when jumping up, powering off the entire machine while I was working. A thick computer manual resided on top of that PC which was enough to thereafter put the cat off thinking of it as a suitable bed.

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

"users would need to reassociate filetypes"

I keep having to do that on normal Windows 10!

FFS Microsoft, please FIX the fscking bugs in the existing crap BEFORE bolting more crap on top of it!

Take Sajid Javid's comments on IR35 UK contractor rules with a bucket of salt, warns tax guru

Re: There's an elephant you're ignoring

You are Jacob Ree-Smogg and I claim my 50p.

"We've mailed the Conservative Party press office and will update this story if we hear anything"

Shirley, you mean the "Conservative Party lies and misinformation office"?

Former Oracle product manager says he was forced out for refusing to deceive customers. Now he's suing the biz

Re: Do Not, Under Any Circumstances...

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing that. It makes me glad I've never had the misfortune to work for Larry's yacht enterprise.

Google fell for a real Looker, but now Brit competition watchdog's probing data biz slurp

Re: likely to have a negative impact on the market

Usually, the latter.

Explain yourself, mister: Fresh efforts at Google to understand why an AI system says yes or no

Re: debuggability

James Nicoll summed it up nicely (or not, depending on your point of view): The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Internet Society CEO: Most people don't care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it

Re: Most people don't care one way or another.

I own a .org domain for the non-profit writing group that I help run. If the domain price goes up stupidly then I will convert it to some other TLD or ditch the website altogether. So, the SOB won't get my money either way.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

At least she didn't tell him to cluck off...

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

"parliament has been dissolved"

The acid used to dissolve them wasn't strong enough - the buggers are still around hoping we'll vote for them yet again!

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

Re: Details

I'd hate to think how much the ink cartridges cost...

...given that, nowadays, they are usually more expensive than the printer itself!

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

Pitch

Aha, so it sounded like pitch but smelt of bovine excrement.

Re: Pity it's not a traditional drive...

Only if you punch the hole in the wrong place.

That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman

Re: writing a variable twice.

Still got my copy of that book - it was a veritable bible of absolute wonders!

Re: writing a variable twice.

Not quite the same but it reminds me when I once had a Commodore 500. No, I DON'T mean an Amiga 500 - this 500 was a "never officially released" computer from around 1982 that did manage to get loose to the tune of a few hundred units several years later. I'd picked one up for something like £25 around 1986. It had the same VIC chip that the Commodore 64 used.

It also had an horrendously slow screen update and scroll speed. One day, not too long after owning it, I managed to track down the reason why. Every time it wrote a value to either the screen or the colour memory it would then execute a loop that read the value back from that memory and compared it to what it had written out in the first place - it would only exit the loop once the values matched. As the screen write went through a RAM vector it was possible to bypass the checking loop to speed things up considerably, though it did make me wonder at the state of the hardware in the first place that required such a weird checking loop bodge to be added in the first place!

There's more on this beast and its family here: http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/computer/cbm2/

Microsoft has made a Surface slab that mere mortals can dismantle

Re: a Surface slab that mere mortals can dismantle

Burn it!

PSA: Turning off silent macros in Office for Mac leaves users wide open to silent macro attacks

SUAJLMGOWIA

Huh?

Re: Testing

Dictionary definition of testing: Something Microsoft used to do but now leaves for their beta testers users.

Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?

Re: 20 years ago,...

"I'd got bitten by some manky ginger tom cat ejecting it from my house, which got infected"

Yep, nothing worse than an infected house!

Guess what's on the receiving end of more NASA dollars for SLS?

Let's hope...

...any software written for these SLS beasties is not begin done by the same team responsible for the 737 MAX code...

Microsoft says .NET Framework porting project is finished: If your API's not on the list, it's not getting in

Damn

No Brainfuck framework - sad...

Ye olde Blue Screen of Death is back – this time, a bad Symantec update is to blame

The most shocking thing is...

...that "multiple" businesses were running Symantec in the first place!

What the &*%* did you just $#*&!*# say about me, you little &%$#*? 'AI' to filter Xbox Live chat

Scunthorpe!

I wonder if that famous location will be affected by a profanity filter yet again?

Re: Don't forget about your Pi-hole!

Um... You do realise you can do this ^^^, don't you?

Criminalise British drone fliers, snarl MPs amid crackdown demands

Re: Are aerodromes still a thing?

Yes, and so is waving pieces of paper at Croydon*.

(* or any built-up** area of your choice)

(** or built-down)

Yours

The Society Of People Who Like To Wave Paper A Lot

In 21st-century tech dystopia, smart TV watches you, warns Princeton privacy prof

Re: I just want a fucking display - no Smartiness whatsoever.

I think I'll just stick with my 10 year old non-smart, non-internet enabled TV until it bites the dust.

Margin mugs: A bank paid how much for a 2m Ethernet cable? WTF!

Re: You do notice the cheap cables..

To lower power loss just sellotape 2 or more cables in parallel!

Nine words to ruin your Monday: Emergency Internet Explorer patch amid in-the-wild attacks

"On Monday, September 23, 2019, the fix for this issue will be available via the Microsoft Update Catalog. On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, the update will be made available via Windows Update and WSUS as an optional update. You can get the update in Windows via Settings > Windows Update > Check for Updates."

It's the 25th and it STILL isn't available in Windows Update! So, I installed it manually...

'Ridiculous, rubbish, outrageous, complete bollocks': Just some reviews for Amazon's corporate contribution to Blighty's coffers

"I believe Hodge herself uses the very same mechanisms she complains about."

Yep, she's a politician. They are constantly under the impression that the rules never apply to themselves.