Posts by Wemb

Bill Gates unearths Microsoft's ancient code like a proud nerd dad

Round objects

Say what you like about BG and Microsoft - but that's an incredible ballsy move - not only to promise you have a working application when you don't, but to sell someone an app for which you've not yet written on a platform you don't own and can't afford to buy. Solution? Step 1 - write an emulator for the platform.. Step 2 - write the app on the emulator.. Step 3 - delivery product in under 8 weeks. Talk about agile - some times it takes my work 8 weeks to do the paperwork needed to approve the paperwork needed to start work on any code.

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

I'm still curious as to why installing windows 95 from a CDROM got you to a point where it rebooted halfway through installation to a system without any support for CDROM and still needed to access the .cab files on the cdrom. Once you've hit that particular dumb brick wall a couple of times it was second nature to copy the contents of the /cab/ folder to the HDD before you started an installation but this was always a complete nonsense...

Mixin suspends deposits and withdrawals after $200m cryptocurrency heist

Re: Insider again?

Have always wondered about that - surely several billions dollars worth of radioactive gold is now a) much rarer and b) even harder to steal. Presumably would be an even sounder basis for a currency because it sure as hell would dissuade people from trying to convert their cash back into (mostly) gold.

Microsoft attempts to up its Teams game with new features while locked-down folk flock to rival Zoom... warts and all

User configured backdrops? Woot.

I mean, that's obviously a game-changer - so much more useful than, say being able to pick what bloody font size it uses - I mean, why bother accommodating people with poor eyesight? Font size of point 7 is good for everyone surely?

Any enquiry about accessibility is just met with zoom in in your browser or 'Hey! You can vote for that feature'.

Microsoft's little eyes light up as Oscar-winning Taika Waititi says Apple keyboards make him 'want to go back to PCs'

Clickity-clck

I do sympathise with him, but my UniComp Model M-remake has, alas, been banned from the office on noise pollution grounds.

Microsoft takes us to 2004 with new Windows 10 so you don't mistake it for Server 2003

Money

<sigh> I still use MS Money - it's a damn good product and a cracking shame MS dropped it.

Microsoft emits another peep at PowerShell 7 with new toys and the return of an old friend

Ooooo

Three standout items for me;

* ??= which is variable assignment only if it's new and throw an error if it's not. That'll help inexperienced coders from accidentally reusing variables

* foreach-object -parallel : Does what it says on the tin

* Making pwsh a fully working login shell for linux - looking forward to seeing the look on the face of my solaris-fanboy boss when I tell him that.

All good stuff - just wish our companies windows boxes were using a version of PS that's as new as the one on my Linux box - pain in the arse having to re-write PS scripts so they're compatible with the version 5 I keep finding on our Windows fleet.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Always pays..

To under promise and over deliver than it does to over promise and under deliver. Great for situations like this when you could otherwise embarrass the grey-beards. Also a good strategy for when you want to take it a bit easier. Just promise that any one hour job will take three hours to complete. When you deliver it in under two hours, you'll still look like a hero and you'll get to go home unstressed.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

While running an inadequately tested script on live data is obviously a recipe for disaster, I do have sympanthy for the PFY here. There's nothing guarnanteed more to induce mistakes (and ill-advised workarounds) that giving someone bright a boring and repetitive job to do - especially one that really is crying out be automated. I'd have tried exactly the same as he did back in my youth - in fact, I did - I was given several hundred MS exchange email accounts to setup at a school I worked out - and my PHB expected me to manually logon to each account, run some bit of MS code to configure some client-end settings, and then logout again. All manually. Well bugger that... Boring and repetitive jobs are what computers were invented for.

Emacs and Vim both release first new updates in years

Emacs doesn't give you RSI, it's not it's fault it was designed for a keyboard with three types of shift key (shift, front and top) and four different control keys (control, meta, super and hyper). Honestly, what's the problem with a keyboard where you need seven fingers each of your three hands to use properly?

Lave

Oh, ffs, someone's implemented Elite in emacs... Emacs wins.

Oooo

I'll have to update my copy of Emacs - wonder what's in there now - another new adventure game? Some new version of the Tower of Hanoi simulator? A new screensaver? Or perhaps they've getting more upto-date by implementing Angry Birds in ascii alongside Snake and Tetris. Even 25 years ago on the sun systems I used at uni, Emacs's icon was already a kitchen sink.

Really, Emacs is great, and I love it to bits, but it's a text editor which thinks it's an OS - some one really should have said 'enough' about 30 years ago..

Europe's Earth-watching sat rides Soyuz to orbit

Oh pah! What sort of person cuts the video directly _before_ the booster cut out and Korolev's cross?

BOFH: Sure, I could make your cheapo printer perform miracles

Appalling!

What a despicable thing to do to a Mont Blanc. Sure, take the owner out, but take pity on a good pen, it's not it's fault who owned it.

Raspberry Pi 3 to sport Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE – first photos emerge

Re: Good luck trying to get one!

Yup - and my Rpi 3 just arrived. So - no wait at all for it.

Re: Good luck trying to get one!

Just ordered mine from RS - they given me a shipping date of March 1st - so, we'll see..

Building a better society from the Czechs' version of Meccano

Metal with holes in porn...

Taking this back to the IT side, for fans of metal strips with holes in, might enjoy this implementation of the difference engine... Impressive stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_wy-CxBP8

The cloud that goes puff: Seagate Central home NAS woes

But they do understand about backup...

That's why they brought this box.

I can't count the number of times I've had this conversation with users.

"Our HD/PC/Server has died! We need the data back!"

"What? You didn't have a backup?"

"Of course we did! It's the HD/PC/Server."

"So where's the -other- copy of your data?"

"What other copy?"

<sigh>

Win XP security deadline: Biz bods MUST protect user data – ICO

Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

Yes, we spent millions and millions of pounds fixing the Y2K bug and in the end nothing happened.... Because we spent millions and millions of pounds.

MAC TO THE FUTURE: 30 years of hindsight and smart-arsery

Errr. "Ridley Scott’s dystopian mini-epic featuring the future second Mrs Stallone"??

That wasn't Brigitte Nielsen, it was an English discus thrower called Anya Major.

Pervy TOILET CAMERA disguised as 'flash drive' sparks BOMB SCARE on Boeing 767

No one remembering the self-destructing memory sticks El-Reg mentioned a while back?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/21/runcore_self_destructing_ssd/

New York City plans massive free Wi-Fi zone

Given there was a starbucks on almost every other block, I'd says it already has a free wifi cloud. I certainly didn't need to ever walk very far to get a signal from a free wifi connection last time I visited.

So, Linus Torvalds: Did US spooks demand a backdoor in Linux? 'Yes'

What makes you think compiling from source will help....

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/back-door.html

BOFH: Don't be afraid - we won't hurt your delicate, flimsy inkjet printer

Re: That's why they put WEEE recycling symbols on them

Forget about the pens - convert the thing to a laser-cutter. Much more fun. Add a couple of playmobile characters and you re-enact scenes from Goldfinger.

Puppet gooses admin tool performance with Enterprise 3.0

Re: Close that Window, it's getting shilly in here!

What will stir things up a bit is DSC:

http://redmondmag.com/blogs/it-decision-maker/2013/06/desired-state-configuration.aspx

Which is, at the small glance I've seen so far, looks to be pretty close to Puppet/Chef running on WIndows. Something that, as said, SC isn't too hot on.

Fedora cooks up new Linux for Raspberry Pi

Re: VIM @FrankAlphaXII

[No hash key] Oh, like a Mac. Much fun and games when my Snow Leopard machine decided to ignore alt-shift-3 or whatever the chord for '#' was. Bloody stupid - instead they did give you a 'paragraph' key instead. Very useful.

Elon Musk's 'Grasshopper' hover rocket scores another test success

Re: Rocket Landing is old hat

There's also Hajile - achieving a 'soft landing' by firing solid-fuel cordite rockets just before impact. Didn't work at all well...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajile

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Re: Speaking of Emacs, ....

I use emacs, but to be fair to the others, it must rank as some of the most bloated software ever written. I mean, how many text editors really need at least one adventure game; a tower of Hanoi simulator; Tetris; pong; an implementation of Eliza; a random gibberish generator -and- a mode to plug the random gibberish generator into Eliza?

Intel to leave desktop motherboard market

Oh dear..

My problem with the non-Intel suppliers of motherboards is that the support material available from their websites is almost always rubbish - and the number of motherboards we've purchased that have had such useful features such as duplicate motherboard GUIDs and other enterprise stuff that Intel just got right and others didn't.

Our suppliers can customise the fleets of PCs we buy from them because Intel provide the tools to customise the BIOSs - no idea if ASUS, etc. are geared up for doing the same - I hope they are.

Petition for Alan Turing on £10 note breaks 20,000 signatures

Hooke?

Someone suggested Robert Hooke - admirable sentiment - but they're going to have trouble doing it since Newton has his only portrait destroyed. Could put a picture of a slinky on the back of the tenner, I suppose...

Turing Machine brought to life with Lego

All the real work....

Need a 'real computer'? Fine - attach it to one of these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_wy-CxBP8

Raspberry Pi safe and warm in TINY Lego fortress

Plastic - ack!

I'll be building a Meccano case for mine when I've found a firm description of the exactly measurements of the damn thing so I can ensure I make something that isn't going to electrocute the thing. Can't been brass fittings!

Domesday Book put on touchscreen at Bletchley Park

Gutted...

I was forced by my boss to send a fully operational doomsday^H^H^H domesday machine to the scrapyard in '99 - alas, I only wish I'd had the room to keep it myself. Damn shame.

Minecraft upstages Portal 2 in arty game prize

Bah - poor mans Dwarf Fortress

I wouldn't try and compare Portal 2 with Mincraft - they're both very different beasts. But for sheer creativity, give my Dwarf Fortress everytime. Yes, you can build mega-constructions but the important difference is 1) You don't have to do all the grunt work yourself - it's what your minions are for and 2) there's a lot more gore.

NASA's nuclear Mars tank arrives at launch site

It's been tried before...

Landing heavy vehicles that way, that is - didn't really work though...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajile

Doctor Who's Elisabeth Sladen dies at 63

Too awful

I'd been lucky to meet her a couple of times, and she was a lovely, warm and generous person - it's so sad she's died.

Apple chap knocks up ancient Lego computer

Pah - plastic rubbish...

I think this is much more impressive - Babbage's Difference engine, done in Meccanno

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_wy-CxBP8

Scots unleash world's strongest beer

Ewww

That is going to be utterly disgusting...

Wallace and Gromit get the Google doodle treatment

Oh crikey..

That makes me feel old... I had no idea it was twenty years old... Blimey..

Fibreless fibre optics developed by US Air Force

Fibreless fibre optics?..

with line-of-sight restrictions. Doesn't this == semaphore?