Posts by David 132

Atari Video Computer System returns in Lego form

I had a VCS back in the 80s.

I had a VCS, although I can't remember how many switches were on it. On/Off, Black&White/Colour, and I can't remember any more than that!

But I agree completely with the author's comments about Combat. Finest game suite ever devised for total subjugation of one's younger brother. Whether at the Tanks or the Biplanes sub-games, I humiliated him in a manner that can only be described as "total pwnage", as I believe the hep young cats say these days.

How could something with a resolution of about 20x15 and a palette of migraine-inducing hues that made the ZX Spectrum look like 4K HDR, be so much fun?

Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing

Re: CHINA IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY...

>1933 -79 years ago

You might want to re-check that one.

Re: Red-line

>everyone is, as the saying goes, screwed (but starting with the letter F instead).

Fcrewed?

Bloke robbed of $800,000 in cryptocurrency by fake wallet app wants payback from Google

Re: Pearlman

Well, it could have been worse! Obligatory XKCD...

Microsoft's Teams goes native on Apple, retains a human touch

Hey, Cortana...

Hey, Cortana, what's the English translation for "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Afonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" that I just saw on a road-sign?

Computer glitches harmed 'nearly 150' patients after Oracle Cerner system go-live

Re: Not a unique issue

> Kumar,Kumar,Kumar,Kumar

…Kameleon?

(And for that 80’s earworm, you’re welcome.)

Re: Unknown problems

It definitely sounds like an ideal use case for blockchain and/or AI, doesn’t it? Perhaps Oracle will be brave enough to bring us the first health records system that uses GANs to generate realistic-looking treatment plans.

China's Xiaomi teases tech to control smart homes with brain waves

Re: Ah.

I remember that movie. I think it was named Chrome, or Brave, or Safari, or something along those lines.

Anti-piracy messaging may just encourage more piracy

Re: Rant

Hey, if it helps, this site's journalism gets my approval. I for one wish Andrew O and Lewis Page still wrote for the Reg, because their pieces were always well-written and thought-provoking - even when I didn't agree with the premise. I'm pretty sure AO liked to bait his readership occasionally by being deliberately contrarian, just to kick the metaphorical hornets' nest and stand back sniggering...

Re: From "The IT crowd"

Indeed. And to be fair, the article itself includes a link to that same video ("...And as a result, they say, the video was widely parodied.")

US regulators set the stage for small, local nuclear power stations

Plus, doesn't "more radioactive" equate to "is radioactive and dangerous for much less time"? IANANRE but that's my understanding - that generally, you can have waste that has a long half-life and is slightly radioactive for long, long periods, or you can have waste that has a short half-life and is very radioactive, but for a manageable length of time.

Hackable hardware PineBook Pro finally starts shipping again

Re: No Thanks - PINE64 Community Rules and Code of Conduct

> After all these years, has "Resume from Suspend" ever been fixed on the Pinebook Pro, Pine Micro?

Well, from reading some of the comments above, I infer that Pine Micro has worked around that issue, by making the Pinebook Pro permanently woke.

I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

Re: The trick is to be the one who buys for the former and resells for the latter...

I'm reminded of the exchange between Michael Caine and Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on the subject of the former's wine cellar.. something along the lines of

"At least you can drink the wine!"

"No, I couldn't drink them, they're far too valuable."

"Fine! Well sell them!"

"Oh no, I couldn't possibly do that, they mean far too much to me..."

Re: Before computers we used to make stuff that worked

Well yes, cardboard was the OEM factory solution.

The better solution for the Mini enthusiast was to take a Marigold rubber glove, cut the fingertips off, feed an HT lead through each finger-hole and ziptie the glove around each lead and the distributor. Total waterproofing.

Re: Before computers we used to make stuff that worked

You've reminded me of this delightful Punch cartoon from February 1940.

Re: You know you're old when...

So what you're saying is that it produced a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?

You're sure it said GOBLIN TEASMADE on the side and not NUTRI-MATIC?

Lapping the computer room in record time until the inevitable happens

Re: Obligatory XKCD

"Waiting for my Windows 10/11 PC to install updates that I didn't ask for, interrupting my workflow at a time that is maximally inconvenient for me, and with no way to defer or cancel the updates..."

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

> For those who are interested...the electric typewriter keyboard was basically an array of push switches on a grid - the hardware was a ribbon cable soldered to the grid

Awww... of all the ways to do it, that is the most boring and sensible one to choose.

I was hoping you'd say your company's product was a Heath-Robinson/Rube-Goldberg assemblage of actuator rods and solenoids that was clamped to the typewriter keyboard to press each key as necessary!

This world is too dull.

Re: Sarah? Is the Moderatrix back again?

> We live in hope …

…and die in Caergwle.

Sorry, niche joke there from my family’s part of Wales. Couldn’t resist.

I was about to say, ALL CAPS? …it sounds like you’d inadvertently created the original prototype Bombastic Bob!

(Just kidding, BB.)

Reg readers tell us what they wanted for SysAdmin Appreciation Day

Re: I am surprised ...

Modified cattle prod, you say? Allow Eddie and Richie to demonstrate...

OK brainiacs, we've got an IT cold case for you: Fatal disk errors on an Amiga 4000 with 600MB external SCSI unless the clock app is... just so

Re: The real mystery is how Paula discovered the clock work around ...

Well yes. And a comment along the lines of "Those are reserved for purchase by the Legal dept."

Re: The real mystery is how Paula discovered the clock work around ...

Replying reeeeeeeeeeeally late to this thread (because it was referenced from a July 2022 "On Call" story). Greetings to you all from the strange and futuristic world of 2022. But I digress.

Your Agnus Dei story reminds me of my favourite classical music anecdote.

There is, as some fules kno, a choral piece by the 16th-Century English composer Thomas Tallis named "Spem in Alium", which is Latin for "Hope in Any Other". It's a beautiful piece, and frequently performed by choral societies.

...Who, distressingly often, mis-spell it as "Spem in Allium".

Which would translate as "Hope in the Onion"! So if you see any confused musicians wandering round worshipping shallots...

VMware’s subscriptions start at 16 cores, prices won't be made public

Re: "cannot be easily shared or copied and pasted"

Yeah, I’m sure there used to be a technology back in the olden days that would convert from images to text. But Oh Crikey Really, I can’t remember what it was called.

Apple's secret car team tosses keys to Lamborghini lead

Re: Exclusive Apple features

> - 20 colors of silicone bumpers to chose from

Nice, but ITYM “car will be made entirely of Gorilla Glass and magnesium alloy and will look exquisite, but will scratch and chip as soon as you drive through a light drizzle, so at a very reasonable cost Apple will sell you their own or 3rd-party silicone car-brascorsets that will protect the bodywork at the cost of making your exquisite new vehicle about 2x the size and resembling a hideous safety concept car from the 1970s”

Re: After so long

I know, right? I remember the bad old days when El Reg would be scathingly sarcastic in an article such as this. It’s good to see that the site has won the victory over itself and learned to love Big Brother Apple.

Re: Apple Tractors

ITYM “Veblen good”. Definition for anyone who isn’t familiar with the term.

Re: Apple Tractors

Well, they've already sorted out how to get short-range messages to their tractor, when they added Near Field Communication to previous iPhones...

NASA's Lunar Orbiter spots comfortably warm 'pits' all over the Moon

Re: Orbital Potato Gun

> who wants a moon that sounds like a Harley Davidson?

Dunno, but as for someone wanting a moon that sounds like a clock, well, that would be a lunatic.

Re: Not Lava Tubes

No, stupid, it’s where Lord Lucan and Elvis keep Shergar in their red double-decker bus. Do try to keep up. /s

Microsoft warns Windows 10 patch broke printing for some

Re: Good old XP

I'm tempted to make a flippant remark along the lines of "yes, and the 30,000 black hats worldwide who have root access to your PC really appreciate the availability of the printer too..." but I won't.

Because I'm better than that. And also I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the machine air-gapped or otherwise protected.

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: That's so stupid...

And the same goes for the two farthings Baldrick thinks he's got hidden inside that mouldy potato.

Re: Don't know if it's just that my coffee hasn't kicked in yet...

Including Ten Pund notes made by Mitchell and Webb, with credit cards that improve on the originals by being made of cheese?

Re: Years ago....

Anyone else remember when computer software manuals were printed on green or red paper to try and deter little Johnny from having his dad duplicate the manual using his office photocopier?

Beta Basic for the ZX Spectrum is one I particularly remember - black ink on dark red paper. Barely readable by humans, never mind photocopiers. And using that replacement BASIC without a manual would have been a PITA.

(Pint for the author of Beta Basic. It was awesome and was what should have been in the Speccy's ROM from the get-go.)

Re: That's so stupid...

Well, they did hand-colour the notes with the finest Green. After, presumably, making rings and brooches out of it.

Microsoft to blockheads: NFTs and blockchains aren't welcome in Minecraft

>We've never needed NFTs to trade oil or pork bellies.

Or indeed, Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice. Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd were trading that almost 40 years ago.

(Edit: Holy crap. Typing that, I just realized myself that the movie is nearly 40 years old. What the hell??)

Apple forgoes cooling systems in M2 MacBook Air

Re: The title is no longer required.

Accidentally defragging your SSD?

British boffins make touchless computing tech on the cheap

Re: Where's the God in this?

Oh go on. You're among friends like-minded unreconstructed perverts here.

Re: Where's the God in this?

It has no cloud dependency. No DLC, no microtransactions. Doesn't send telemetry or push "exclusive content from carefully-curated partners". No enforced updates. No mandatory account creation. No social media integration.

Please, at least tell me that it has a Modern UI where text and controls are indistinguishable from each other (and the window background) and there are dark patterns to steer you away from the useful options?

Spidey-sense tingling. Does not compute. Error! Error!

Sage accused of strong-arming customers into subscriptions

Re: SaaS

Reminds me of Bernard and Manny drunkenly discussing their impending fortune:

"Manny, we are going to be ve...very rich."

"How rich, Bernard?"

"Oooh... uncontrolib... incontinently rich."

"Success will bring problems! I don't want to wake up in rehab with Shergar!"

..and it just gets sillier from there.

Disentangling the Debian derivatives: Which should you use?

Re: No it isn't

Well, let's see how good the Register's obscenity filters are and call it:

"Semprini Belgium".

Re: Devuan

I made a joke in another article's comments a few days ago about systemd taking over every aspect of the linux platform, and ended my comment with hyperbole along the lines of "some distant future version will even..." (here, I racked my brains to think of something as far away from init scripts as it was possible to imagine) "...handle DISK PARTITIONING, hahahahaha"

Only for a fellow commentard to point out that yes, systemd now handles disk partitioning too.

Truth, stranger, fiction, etc etc.

The Debian installatiøn røutine once bit my sister.

Re: Ice Cream flavo[u]rs

Stretching your (well, Sir Pterry/Neil Gaiman’s) analogy perhaps too far, I wonder what the Them would make of the Goats’ Cheese, Marionberry & Jalapeño ice-cream I bought from the somewhat hipster-ish Salt & Straw last week?

FCC chair wishes for 100Mbps down, 20Mbps up broadband minimum in US

2015's 25/3 standard would be welcome here.

I'm about 40 minutes away from Portland Oregon, one of the country's tech hubs. I'm just off a major highway, with a town of 100K people about 5 miles down the hill from me and another town of similar size about 8 miles in the other direction. Neighbors all around. This is not the back end of nowhere by any means.

Right now I'm paying $150/month to a local niche ISP for a microwave relay link that bounces off a dish down in the valley and gives me maybe 14Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up on a good day. It does at least have the side-benefit of dropping the occasional cooked-from-the-inside eagle onto my lawn (just kidding, nature lovers).

So, yeah. I'd like to get the previous version of the standard, never mind Rosenworcel's new improved one. 100/20? In my dreams.

Go to hell, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon... and especially Ziply, who keep spamming my phone with unsolicited texts advertising their fiber service even though they don't serve my area.

Copper shortage keeps green energy, tech ventures grounded

Re: RTSC

Also used - in the past at least - in domestic wiring. My house in Oregon, built in the early 80s, has aluminium wiring for several of the circuits. And there are special (galvanically not electrically) isolating connectors widely available for bridging it to copper.

CP/M's open-source status clarified after 21 years

My first PC - in the pedantic, “technically it stands for Personal Computer so includes just about anything smaller than a mainframe” sense - was a Durango F-85. I never could find a CP/M-80 boot disk for it, so the poor thing never did more than boot to a flashing ‘_’ prompt. Shame, because it was an impressive piece of hardware - built-in keyboard, 2x 5-1/4” floppies, and daisywheel printer, with even a little monitor too.

Re: 128 Mbytes!

Obligatory XKCD :)

Liam - commiserations on still waiting for your Spectrum Next. I’m in the same boat, as the Aug 2021 release date has faded into memory due to so many factors. Still, the frequent updates on Kickstarter from Henrique, Alvin, Jim & others are keeping my anticipation alive.

Fingers crossed that the Release 2 machines - complete with new FPGAs and re-re-re-tweaked motherboards - will ship before too long, eh?

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Re: Nice Car...

And it doesn’t even have warm buttocks while doing so.