Posts by TRT

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

Re: Hm...

But nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept. That link is to information showing a problem 10 years ago with MagSafe 1.

Hm...

Not perfectly germane but I actually quite liked the MagSafe connector. Innovative, reversible, easy to use, functional... And then that gets thrown out again for USB-C.

Question is, would we even HAVE the current form of USB-C if it weren't for MagSafe and Lightning?

And I agree with the earlier comments about the electrical functionality of USB-C and the fact that physically identical cables & accessories that fit into the same hole might well not work or not work very well due to differences in protocols and signal frequency and all that jazz.

I had to admit almost turning purple when the simpleton newsreaders were suggesting that one charger would do everything... like charge a gaming laptop from a bluetooth earpiece PSU??? erm... no. This way madness lies.

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

Re: How can it take MULTIPLE YEARS to go 64 bit?

Totally impervious to both alpha AND beta (testing).

15 years on, Euroboffins finally work out what it took to send the Huygens Titan probe into such a spin

Re: seems sloppy

Hang on. Is that URL Jake Bullet?

Re: seems sloppy

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. It happened in the past, it wasn't catastrophic, it wasn't a problem that needed to be solved before another mission... it was an unexpected and interesting observation of minor significance and thus a project ideal to give to someone who is still a bit wet behind the ears and who could learn a lot from undertaking it.

It happens a lot.

A fictional example:

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were well understood. It is said that such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties.

The physicists encountered repeated failures while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars and they eventually announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up after a particularly unsuccessful party, found themselves reasoning this way: If, they thought, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must logically be a finite improbability. So all they had to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into a finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!

They did this and managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air. Unfortunately, after they were awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness, they were lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realised that the one thing that they really couldn't stand was "a smart arse."

ICANN finally reveals who’s behind purchase of .org: It’s ███████ and ██████ – you don't need to know any more

Re: Connected Giving Foundation

How many times do I have to tell you? The money was only RESTING in the account...

Y2K quick-fix crick? 1920s come roaring back after mystery blip at UK's vehicle licensing agency

Re: 2038? That'll be the least of our worries

Yeah. Didn't like it. Characterisations were up the creek. Story was bizarre. The young lady in it was seriously gorgeous though. Homicidal terrorist personality kind of puts a damper on that though.

Rocks.

Re: 2038? That'll be the least of our worries

Orphan 55? Sounds like a particularly potent batch of Vodka.

Re: Even Easier

19th century solution for a 20th century problem.

Sorry...

21st century problem.

Re: Who's a betting man?

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I waited 576,000,003,579 years for your return. A few of those years were spent parking cars. The first 10 million were the worst. Then the second 10 million - they were the worst too. After that I went into a bit overflow...

Tea tipplers are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than you triple venti pumpkin-syrup soy-milk latte-swilling fiends

Re: missing details

Substances almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Re: Unfortunately,

It only takes a small amount as well. A pico.

What was Boeing through their heads? Emails show staff wouldn't put their families on a 737 Max over safety fears

Re: How many other manufacturers?

We are the Boing. We are one. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Re: How many other manufacturers?

To his defence, he contracted polio and managed to accidentally hang himself in the ropes and pulleys of a contraption he built himself to aid his mobility.

Midgley has done more harm to the environment and as a result has probably killed more people than anyone else in the history of the Terran biosphere. When you take the cumulative effect of the murder rate linked to lead in petrol, climate change from vehicle use (he made the internal combustion engine cheaper to produce and easier to use), the consequences of the ozone hole... again, like dieselgate almost impossible to break out definite, direct and incontrovertible linkage, but it can't have helped the statistics! Mind you, I guess the same could be said of people who found religions, when it's all added up.

TL;DR Time tends to smear the perception of mortality and muddy the waters of causality, whereas the human coincidence machine loves a good, easy to understand, mass-death event such as a plane crash.

Re: How many other manufacturers?

It's a bit like that guy who developed both CFCs and put lead in petrol. Thomas Midgley.

Hey kids! Ditch that LCD and get ready for the retro CRT world of Windows Terminal

Re: I've got the real thing

Ah, somewhere else on here I posted a happening about magnetic interference between a Commodore 1080S and an IBM 5154 monitor. The system as originally designed made use of a Microvitec CUB on the Commodore side. There was no magnetic interference from that screen! Unfortunately one beam channel failed on it and that's when we bought the 1080S.

Re: I don't need retro effects

Indeed, old black and white transfers of wiped colour TV broadcasts, if made without a suitable notch filter, retained artefact allowing the recovery of a chroma signal. The intrinsic properties of colour CRT and their analog waveforms allowed this trickery to take place. Some things really are better than modern stuff

Re: I think it's an age thing...

Given time the weight of knowledge will eventually distort space time and make any well thought out library plan into a labyrinth of twisting corridors and hidden, mysterious doors.

Once a critical mass has been achieved, wormholes will form giving, say the normally timid and surly librarian type, the opportunity to slip into an alternative historical period where they can safely let loose as roman gladiatori or decadent and perverted French aristocracy. This is their reward.

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

Re: Pantone Classic Blue

No. A sudden transition was required for the effect.

Re: Pantone Classic Blue

Something I used to do for a living was taking a whole pile of Pantone papers and making them look grey.

It changes at Christmas. I had a very nice Pantone instead of a Christmas cake.

Is that...

A super intelligent shade of the colour blue?

Y2K? It was all just a big bun-fight, according to one Reg reader

Indeed, I was brought on-board in a college of printing during late 1999 and my first task was to certify Y2K compliance throughout and provide a contingency plan. Within a few days of starting, we had the switch from BST to GMT. Hundreds, HUNDREDS, of computers needed clocks resetting. The previous computer tech bod just assigned his two technicians the job of going around and resetting all the clocks manually. I couldn't believe it! Once I found out that was how they handled clock changes (No, I couldn't quite work out why he'd decided to do it that way either; I found out when my techs had scheduled that into their work diaries and I queried it), I said "No way, Jose", and instead scheduled them to use that time to install the NTP clients I sourced on EVERYTHING and I set up a couple of internal NTP servers. Y2K testing during the half term was then a cinch - just fudge the NTP servers and see what fell over.

Only had a half-dozen industrial control systems in the presses and some pre-press gear to check after that, and most of that "testing" was just getting hold of the Y2K compliance certificates from the manufacturers. The whole thing passed without so much as a hiccup or a burp. But of course, I came in on 3rd and 4th of January to run everything up, give it a quick once over, then shut it down again, ready for teaching to resume on 10th Jan. Double pay for two days, and 4 days off in lieu. Sweet.

Re: 1am 2nd Jan 2000

I believe the "sequence" of degree level education runs BS, MS and PhD aka Bull Shit, More Shit and Piled high and Deep.

Eccles cakes are encased in puff pastry. Flaky pastry is also known as Rough Puff Pastry. It uses cubes of butter instead of square slices of butter as used in proper Puff Pastry.

Re: But were they ...

Did they have dates in them?

Those are fat Chorley cakes pictured. Aka fly pies.

Best before...

Presumably they carried a date stamp of some type.

IT exec sets up fake biz, uses it to bill his bosses $6m for phantom gear, gets caught by Microsoft Word metadata

Well... seized really. Grasped, clenched, taken, held, possessed. From the root kabj.

Re: How to be a thief

But not the tax office I bet.

Re: Silly question, maybe

Short for "executables"?

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

Re: No Service

I think I know the place. Has an Ingress portal only hackable via the pub's WiFi.

Train-knackering software design blunder discovered after lightning sparked Thameslink megadelay

I told you, Gareth.

Software. Glad the details came out in the wash.

I lack that capacity.

The Register disappears up its own fundament with a Y2K prank to make a BOFH's grinchy heart swell with pride

CHAIN "bofh"

*OPT 2,1

A sprinkling of Star Wars and a dash of Jedi equals a slightly underbaked Rise Of Skywalker

Written for kids?

Well, I've always wondered about that. I mean, on the one hand, Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, on the other a plot based around trade agreements, political governance styles, genetic engineering, good guys that are really bad guys that are good guys, but which aren't really if you say the magic word, and... I give up! Makes me wonder if one could sex up Westminster today using fuzzy costumes and slapstick.

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

We once had a twin screen set up

Home brewed of course, but the two CRTs would interfere with each other. It was back in the days of the C 1000 and the IBM coprocessor card.

Tried putting a grounded steel plate between them which kind of worked a bit. Then I nickel coated the plate with a spray which helped a lot. Still not perfect so I coated the case of the monitors with the same spray. But for reasons of aesthetics I coated the inside. Who would think that the designers of the monitor would run a HT track right along the edge of the PCB where it slid into a plastic groove in the rear casing? A few power cycles of thermal expansion was all it took to finally grind the lacquered insulation layer down to the point it arced through the spray coating. Quite a loud crack was heard as the monitor fused itself into oblivion. Stupid design if you ask me!

Re: Ah, degaussing

Radiation. Magnetic radiation.

Storage Area 1 burned itself out in a magnetic firestorm. But Storage Area 2... that's 620 times the size. If that goes up... there's no telling what will happen.

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

Re: A what USB stick?

USB3 as well. A rare beast for a simple memory stick in an office environment! Especially amongst those who just use the ones given away free and full of sales blurb at conferences.

Brother, can you spare a dime: Flickr owner sends mass-email begging for subscriptions

I'm still a pro member...

but I haven't used it since they changed the formatting some years back and basically ruined it all. Daft really. I used to love the whole social thing and going out taking photos. Now, it's just, Meh.

InLink Limited limited: Firm that puts up UK's ad-supported phone booths enters administration

Re: "London Streets"?

Drug dealers?

Re: Simple Solution

"The way to prevent payphones from being used for drug deals is to ban something more popular than drugs"

Ban mobile phones. Simples. ;-)

On the other hand, if the drugs gangs realised that the cable thieves were wrecking their trade... Or is that rather too Ankh-Morporkian?

Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures

Re: Good for them & the judge

And indeed a malicious prosecution case could be brought should it be found that the SPMs were charged with theft etc with the primary purpose of covering something up. Obviously if the charges were brought in good faith, then there's no case to answer, but if someone, somewhere in the Post Office knew that SPMs were being prosecuted and that there was exculpatory evidence... different story.

Re: Ooooh first post....

They attempted to deliver a downvote, but is sorry that they missed you. Your downvote can be collected the next working day from the local sorting office.

What do you mean your eardrums need a break? Samsung-owned JBL touts solar-powered wireless headphones you don't need to charge

Scotland? You'll be needing a...

direct-ethanol fuel cell then.

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

Cross a chicken with an octopus and then we call all have a leg.

Re: "all died within a week"

They weren't bitter at the end. More sort of sweet and sour.

100 mysterious blinking lights in the night sky could be evidence of alien life... or something weird, say boffins

Re: blinkenlights

Well, you'd need to consult an expert on blinking lights.