Posts by DJV

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

@AC

So, as evidence, you show us two links from none other than Microsoft? Sheesh, pull the other one!

Why a detachable cabin probably won’t save your life in a plane crash

Spooky

Damn, I mention "Wogan" one day and by the next, he's dead :(

I hope I am not some sort of jinx.

(Cameron, Cameron, IDS, Hunt, Cameron - just testing - Cameron)

Reminds me of something Spike Milligan once said:

Flying never killed anyone, it's the crashing that kills you.

(if I remember correctly, he said it when being interviewed on that early evening Wogan chat show)

Seagate’s triple whammy: Disk numbers, costs, and flash

Agreed. I wouldn't touch a Seagate HDD for any money nowadays. Reliability - we've heard of it.

Reg readers battle to claim 'my silicon's older than yours' crown

Re: Acorn System 1

Between 1978 and 1980 I worked for the PCB manufacturing company that supplied the prototype boards for this, though we never got the contract for the production run. I did keep one of the bare 8K memory extension boards with the intention of expanding my CBM PET - a project that never actually happened.

This gun says you ain’t leaving until my PC is fixed

Re: In a dim and distant past.

Excellent story! (unless you were there for the 3 hours, of course)

I use to be a TV engineer for Rediffusion in Norwich back in the 1970s. We never had that specific problem though we did have one particular customer who used to swap all the valves around in his set and then call us to put them back into the correct sockets. Being quite hardy things there was (mostly) no damage done to the valves.

Lights out! Newbie IT manager's dark basement trip

Re: Brand New Column?

Your memory is almost fully functional, CDD! It was actually Network Week and I have proof of this as I have just dug out a copy of the 22nd October 1997 edition. The story I'd submitted for "This Damn War" was published on page 4 of that issue. Page 3 also had the BOFH column long before he'd taken up residence at el Reg.

Server retired after 18 years and ten months – beat that, readers!

@2+2=5

Wow, you have media where you can store data OUTSIDE the disk? Like in the power cables or something?

'Powerful blast' at Glasgow City Council data centre prompts IT meltdown

@thedroog

"marsd"

Is that some sort of Unix daemon?

Windows for Warships? Not on our new aircraft carriers, says MoD

Re: OK, I'll bite.

Looking at the other screens to the right of the XP one - with the blue background, white window borders/title bar and hints of red/orange... yay, they've upgraded to Amiga Workbench 1.3!

T'was the night before Christmas, and an industrial control system needed an upgrade

Re: Which movie was this?

There was a major Perl script running at a company I used to be at. The original programmer, who had departed some months earlier, had made the script as terse and unreadable as possible. The only comment in the whole thing was next to some code whose purpose no one had any idea about.

The comment was extremely useful - it said: "This is a skanky hack"

Hapless Virgin Media customers face ongoing email block woes

@moiety

Exactly! The only downside of your post is that I can only upvote it once!

Mozilla looses Firefox 43, including Windows 64-bit variant

Re: lose...looses

And, many times, was there heard the swoosh sound of things going high over clueless heads.

Have a beer, Alister!

Hey, Oracle, what's in that VirtualBox security update? *crickets*

Oracle - ugh!

My heart sank a bit when Sun bought VirtualBox, and then plummeted when Oracle bought Sun. I really hope that VirtualBox eventually escapes their clutches (via a fork, if necessary) like Open/LibreOffice and MySQL/MariaDB have done.

Mozilla bins 'Tiles' ads plan in Firefox

Re: Fork off

Pale Moon?

Unfortunately...

...that hasn't worked for the normal UI. They keep trying to move things around, bolt on unwanted extras and remove useful stuff. Thank goodness for things like Classic Theme Restorer - without that, I would have abandoned Firefox a long time ago.

Doctor Who: The Hybrid finally reveals itself in the epic Heaven Sent

Ashildr "me" is the hybrid?

Hmm, but what if the Doctor really is the Hybrid? And via his "human" mother who just happens to turn out to be Ashildr, once she's been sent back to Gallifrey's past to before he was born. Well, she is immortal, so might be considered a suitable mate for another time lord...

...just my theory...

BOFH: How long does it take to complete Friday's lager-related tasks?

Re: Time sheet systems

Same here - except I'm self-employed and wrote my own system (as it was simpler to do that than use a spreadsheet). Dead simple, takes seconds to fill in stuff, granularity to the minute, produces monthly invoices in a couple of clicks and provides info to stuff on the tax form at the end of the financial year. No time wasting crap or special codes to remember whatsoever - it works the way I NEED it to work!

ICO fines PPI claims firm £80,000 over 1.3m spam SMS deluge

Good

Pity the fine wasn't higher for these annoying scumbags.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

...or the rest of him...

Microsoft gets Edge on blocking ad injectors

Re: Another MSFT omnishambles

Congratulations on totally missing the point of the article.

Yesterday: Openreach boss quits. Today: BT network goes TITSUP

"no easy way to report it to BT"

Obviously another one from the "No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue" school of thought stupidity.

Coding with dad on the Dragon 32

Re: Colour? Hah!

If you had ever attempted to upgrade it to a "B" with 32K of memory, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway as the PSU wasn't good enough to handle the B's extra power requirements. Which is what I discovered when I tried a full A to B upgrade - had to send it back to Acorn who then replaced the PSU free of charge with one of the later beefier versions.

How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

"And it seems to be pot luck whether Adobe Flash content works or not."

If you're lucky, it won't...

Finally, with W10, Microsoft’s device strategy makes sense

"So bad, they make Amstrad look good"

Having experienced both in my time, I'm not sure exactly which one is worse - all I know is that any future interactions with either company will be performed using a hands-off approach whether or not I am in possession of a barge steering implement.

Ruin your co-developers' life with Mimic, the Unicode substitution tool

Re: Abusing unicode text is fun!

Indeed, I learned my upside down reading skills at school by electing to sit at the front at the desk that butted up against the teacher's desk (of the same height). She always assumed it was the buggers at the back that were cheating!

Apple 1 goes on sale, expected to fetch £300,000 to £500,000

Having a "play"

Reminds me of an idiot customer we had when I was doing TV repair for Rediffusion in the early 1970s. He regularly called in to say his TV had stopped workng - we'd sigh knowingly and go round to his house and put all the valves back into the correct sockets again. The valves, being rather hardier than chips, just tended to work fine again. We never had any idea why he liked to rearrange them in the first place!

How do you create an SLA and status page for the whole internet? Meet IANA: Keepers of DNS

"but things have changed so much since"

Yep, Jon Postel would now need a bigger sheet of paper if he was still with us!

Kill Flash: Adobe says patch to fix under-attack hole still days away

Well...

...I finally ditched Flash* yesterday. I've put the Firefox addon/patch into place that forces the BBC news web site to give me HTML5 (hmm, that version lacks the volume control, for some reason). So far, so good!

* Apart from the 'other' flash in my SSD, of course!

PIGS IN SPAAAACE: HAMS send porker to 25,927m

Followed quickly by...

...David Cameron with a jetpack!

Official: North America COMPLETELY OUT of new IPv4 addresses

Hold on...

...I'll have a look down the back of the sofa - there may be one or two behind the cushions...

Happy birthday to you, the ruling was true, no charge for this headline, 'coz the copyright's screwed

xkcd...

...has already taken advantage of it!

xkcd.com/1581/

UK.gov wants a cloud wizard at £1,000 a DAY. That's more than the prime minister's salary

£1000

"£1,000 a DAY. That's more than the prime minister's salary"

Should think so, too! This job will (hopefully) require some actual skills!

Robber loses heist case after 'evil twin' defence, gets 60 years

Bacon

The evil one is the one that shags it!

#piggate

POLAR DINOSAURS prowled ARCTIC NIGHT, cast doubt on COLD BLOOD theory

@Wzrd1

"Indeed, as I recall, around that time, Alaska was in a latitude akin to where New England lies today."

YOU WERE THERE!!!??

How to build a server room: Back to basics

Cloakroom

I worked for a Training & Enterprise Council in the 1990s at a time when there was a policy to merge the Business Links with us. We had to take over the local BL's systems and discovered that their server room had previously been a men's toilet. The urinals had gone (and, thankfully, the smell) but the cubicles were still there! I can't remember whether or not the water pipes were still in dangerous proximity.

It was somewhat less than ideal though it did, at least, have a lock on the door (but only a keypad).

Doctor Who storms back in fine form with Season 9 opener The Magician's Apprentice

Grumpy Anonymous Cowards are gonna Grump

Arizona lads recover epic stratovid – two years after launch

Re: Lucky buggers

Try putting it in the lounge.

PRIMITIVE TOOLS found near MICROSOFT headquarters

Re: MS would certainly be an aid to productivity

EULA: you hit thing with this rock, you no have guarunt... gaurent... me say if it not kill thing, then not my fault. If not agree don't open, send back unchipped and no bloodstains for full refund of pebbles.

HP signs ex-Microsoft IE crew for global migration fun and games

"older versions of Windows 10"

As 10 is supposed to be the "last" version, that comment will eventually become true (probably around Christmas).

It's 2015 and miscreants are still trying to dupe you with fake BSoDs

Retro

Can't wait until I see a new one that says "Something wonderful has happened your Amiga is alive!!"

Court battle date set for £300m BT Cornwall termination dispute

Doesn't surprise me

From my experience, BT seem to live on a different planet.

Reg readers show Blitz spirit at Computer Museum lecture

Absolutely fascinating.

Just watched the video instead of working - brilliant!

More like this please, el Reg!

Damn well knew it! Seagate has helium drives in its labs

Yeah but...

...do the vocals of any mp3 tracks stored on it sound a bit squeaky?

Earth wobbles on axis as Google rebrands

Ah, new logo, my life is now complete...

sarcasm tags needed?

Win10 Insider build 10532: Avoid if you run Chrome 64-bit

Ah, Microsoft pretending to listen to its customers again.

Also, trusting Microsoft (or any large corporation) with your personal data is a can of worms waiting to be opened. It's never IF it will ever get opened, it's always WHEN.

Windows 10 now on 75 million devices, says Microsoft

Doing it carefully!

Until VirtualBox runs properly under W10 I'm definitely not shifting my main PC (currently on W7) onto it - hopefully it won't take Oracle more than 11 months to get it running properly again. I may use a spare hard disk and re-install a clean copy of W7 onto that and see what breaks when it upgrades to W10.

My laptop, which was running 8.1 (yuk!) that came pre-installed, upgraded almost ok - MS shoved the crappy, fail-after-reboot Wifi driver onto it so I had to reload the one that actually works and it now appears to be fine.

Boffins promise file system that will NEVER lose data

@Symon

Hah - haven't seen that for years - cheers!

3D-printed robot hand grabs Dyson award for UK

"affordable prosthetics for all”

I play guitar in a live band and, often when I'm playing, my nose starts itching - an extra arm would certainly come in handy there!

Also, having four extra telescopic arms would be neat for those with arachno(man)phobia.