
I found to my surprise that running wine with an old-skool MS-DOS executable automatically fires up DosBox to run it in.
90 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Apr 2010
Recently bought a Motorola (i.e., Lenovo) G32 to replace my aging e5. Lovely phone, but full of Google bloatware that keeps popping up when I least expect it, obscuring things I'm doing and offering the usual insulting '"Maybe later" when they know damn well I want "Never, now f***k off and burn in torment in Hell and never darken my door again". We expect it when we don't pay for things, but I *paid* for this phone!
Apparently it's called Android System Intelligence. It's about as intelligent as a dead cat, as it can't distinguish between newbies and experienced users who've had a smartphone before. Turns the device from a smart phone into a smart-ass phone. The only way to stop it it to disable the ASI app. Despite the hilarious fake scary warnings about how the phone will not work, WW3 will begin, and your dog will die, so far disabling ASI has made my phone usable again. Though depending on your use case, I guess YYMV.
What is this "landline" you speak of? Seriously, so many folks are ditching them all together and using mobile; yeah I guess that isn't as secure as we'd like but there's e2ee stuff like WhatsApp that supports voice or even video calls. My brother hasn't actually tried to phone me by LTE for ages and neither of us has a landline (for anything but broadband) any more; it's all WhatsApp these days. Though I do feel sorry for folks who can't use those methods for whatever reason.
( Of course this has its own problems - as a courtesy I have to *email* the Chinese spooks and *tell them* what I gave the cat for breakfast :P :P )
Michael Dell said if a new PC that lands on a user's desk which doesn't have an AI feature, they're "going to really wonder what happened."
I know what will have happened - my boss won't have been taken in by the snake-oil hype machine.
"Everybody's going to want that. Every piece of software that you're going to use is going to have an AI assistant."
Which I turn off as soon as I can.
AI in everything is the new snake oil. It's the new Metaverse. It's the 100% self-driving cars (cat 5, IIRC). It has it's uses, but it's too full of fail for general deployment, as evidenced by customer helplines and help points (e.g., on train platforms) that can't cope with anything involving subtlety or nuance.
It's artificial, Jim, but not as we know it intelligent :)
I have to use Windows at work and we have 11 now; it is actually not bad to use as long as you strangle it, neuter it, gag Cortana and the AI crap, and cut its wandering hands off -- I have a saved Winearo Tweaker settings file for just this purpose :)
"I don't WANT my laptop to be the Thinnest Model Yet. I want a battery that will outlast the sun, a screen big enough to blind the person behind me, more USB slots than there are apple fanboys in the bay area, a fucking disc reader/writer. P.S. I will pay extra for it to be heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death."
This. I needed a laptop and looked at Dell Precision, as ten year's worth of memory told me they were good. Then WTF? The latest ones looked like identikit skinny blades, well not quite as skinny as everyone else's, but just as plasticky. Ick. Shame on my usual go-to computer brand :(
So I bought a 2014 one with 4th gen i7 and 32GB RAM, FHD 15in screen, put in a 1TB SSD and off I went. Only cost me £200 and despite its age, fast enough for all my essential daily work and a bit extra. Several USB 3 ports too, and yes, I probably could crack open a mugger's skull with it :) The base is plastic, sadly, but the rest is mostly metal.
It seem they literally don't make 'em like that any more :(
Same in Cambridge; but it didn't matter, as I was NOT prepared to walk 100 yards to the bar in sweltering heat in an old cinema with no aircon during a heatwave to pay with card or cash unless I absolutely had to :) I just ordered and paid with the app from my seat 8 yards from the breeze coming in the front door :) Lucky PayPal wasn't down. Took a while because their Wi-Fi was patchy; but at the Regal, it always is - no CrowdStrike needed :)
Forget "would be"; too many companies (i.e., not zero) are *already* using AIs for CS and they re a pain to deal with. Often you're calling Customer Service to resolve some ambiguity in the website and all the AI does is regurgitate the website and obstruct you from getting to a human being. It should be illegal.
The day I can get Linux Mint, or at least stock Ubuntu with Cinnamon, for Apple Silicon is the day I will buy one. I love the hardware but have never felt comfortable with macOS, even the terminal environment has a few oddities, not least the lack of a Debian feel; if I were a GUI user only, maybe, but much of my stuff is scripted to the nth degree.
If only the same could be applied to Android. Both my phones are loaded with bloatware from Google that I will *never* use; most of it can only be disabled, with some dire warning about the system not working properly, which for speech recognition apps and so on is ridiculous. Also Google Play Music is insane, it requires an internet connection even to play music stored on the phone itself; so after installing VLC, you guessed it I *can't* uninstall Google Play Music; it sits there wasting storage space that could be used for things I *want* on my phone :(
"... and is best known for the Sondek LP12 turntable." Among audiophiles I'm sure it is; but surely for Regizens, what with us being IT geeks and all, I'd say the Rekursiv microprocessor would be well known. I mean, if it wasn't for that, I'd have never heard of Linn. Mine's the cheap Sanyo boombox and the drawer full of Motörhead tapes.
Of course, let's not let Intel off the hook for burying AXP in favour of Itanic; AXP + the JIT translator that Microsoft put in NT/2K for AXP would have been a lot better for everyday workloads and given people a good path to the future. And yes I have run Doom on AXP, but in 2022 when it should have been in 1995 :)
Years ago in the late 90s my broadband internet kept failing. BT came out, engineer said he couldn't find a problem but if it persisted, maybe they would 'reset the line card at the exchange'. He did not find any fault in my computer or modem (this bit is important).
BT later sent me a bill claiming it was my fault as they couldn't find a fault of their own; note this was a typical corporate fudge; they did not prove my equipment was at fault, only that they couldn't find a fault with theirs.
Meanwhile the fault had persisted and somewhat later, I phoned them again and suggested they do what the engineer had said; they did it ... lo and behold, my broadband was back!
So I wrote to them and stated what had happened and demanded my money back (which I got), pointing out to them that if they'd done this by default, the whole issue would have gone away.
Logitech have already fallen off their perch. I bought a new wireless keyboard and mouse recently; nothing wrong with it functionally, but the name as printed on the devices is now 'logi' with the lower part of the 'g' styled to look like a smile; in short, they have started getting 'cute' instead of emphasising their technological prowess via their original name: 'logical technology'.
There's a very good reason to wipe out Windows and isolate it in a VM; I tried dual booting once and for a time it worked, but when Windows screwed up as it inevitable does, it took out the bootloader and partition table with it. That was it. From then on, Linux is the only OS and a copy of Windows 10 is confined to a VM where it can be a flaky as always without taking down the real PC. There is only one network share on the host that the Windows VM can write to, which has several backups, and is not critical for the system's operation.
Windows booting on real hardware on my computers? Dream on MICROS~1 :P
Sure: 2D flatso GUI, telemetry, "Are you sure you want to switch, please try Edge?", "Hey I'll just change your file associations 'cos I feel like it", "That's rather old, even though it works fine and has no need to change, sorry no drivers for it now!", "If you want a local account you have to lie to us that there's no internet, we're funny that way", "Yes we know you dismissed the W11 panel in Update, but we'll still keep nagging you to run the checker without giving you a way to tell us there's no way in Hell this thing will run W11, so stop asking", "Sure, we can stop annoying pop-ups - like the one when you're playing a game - but you have to tell us", "The verbose switch in CHKDSK at boot? What does 'verbose' mean, IDK?", "BSOD? Don't worry we won't tell you why without your having to dig through log files and settings!"
An OS should sit quietly in the background waiting for its Holy Sacred God (me) to give it commandments, and otherwise keep the Hell out of my face. When I tell it I want hard info, I expect text not fancy graphics, and text that tells me in detail what the heck is going on."
Should have kept Windows 7 and Aero, made the under the hood improvements, added a 2D GUI for tablets, and left it at that. And people wonder why I don't use Windows any more!
I hardly need to drive; but when I need to, I need it *bad*. If it wasn't for astronomy club, nature reserves and a couple of other things, I would ditch the car entirely; however, these are too far to cycle or walk, and most cannot be reached by public transport *at all*. Period. Full stop. End of story.
The few that can are prohibitively expensive to reach, or do not run at the times needed to leave and get back home, or have long waits for connections. Even the few that can be cycled to from a train involve expensive equipment than can't fit on a bike or is too fragile to risk taking by bike. Until the government mandates buses to places like this, ditching the car is nonsense.
EVs at £1000 or so for reasonable second-hand price? Like my petrol car? That needs to become common. Even then, I am one of millions with no off-street parking. The government needs to *flood* the country with charging points before even thinking of banning petrol and/or sales of second hand petrol cars.
"Who knew I'd still worry about some odd EISA driver on alpha, after all these years?"
Thanks for doing so, Mr Torvalds, I do like to play Doom on my 1997 AlphaServer now and then - just for old time's sake :) Gets a bit hard if it can't see the SCSI controllers :)
This. For day to day, I'm using a 2008 Dell 490: no TPM, no UEFI. With 16GB RAM and an SSD for the system drive, I can open 16 tabs in Chrome at once without it complaining. A lowly Ti550 is fine for the older video games I play. If I were still using Windows, this wouldn't run 11 at all. From what the article said about 21H1, I'm not even sure it'd run later versions of 10. But it works. Fine. Fast.
It's such a shame for those people with perfectly serviceable PCs who aren't tech savvy enough to move away from Windows and are thus forced to spend money on something they don't need in order to get something they do (or will, in 2025).
I love these machines; they look like they could have come right out of Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet. Born the same year they were, I didn't have Lego kits of them as a child; however, for my 7th birthday, Mum made me a birthday cake in the shape of one, complete with mini swiss rolls for wheels, strips of marzipan for tracks and blue icing (don't think there was much choice in fancy food colouring at the local Tesco in 1972). That was almost as cool as the real thing :)
Don't forget Stephen Morse with '1MB is a lot for 1976'; indeed it was, but not having 32-bit segment registers (even with lower 4 bits forced zero to begin with) as a priority? Maybe making SI and DI 32 bits, like having a couple of 16-bit index registers in 8 bit CPUs? That decision alone has cost us a hell of a lot of progress :(
I don't remember, as both cats I mentioned passed away ages ago; however, given Siri was an Asian Self (Lilac) and thus essentially a Burmese, it could explain her weird addiction :) Another one, Felix was part Burmese and part RB and he was a devil for eating anything odd; at my Dad's wake, we had to have the flowers at Mum's house in the conservatory, visible through glass, as Mr 'bloody' Felix would try to eat the petals :)
Fond (well, kinda) memories of the six-monthly disassembly of my Gateway laptop to remove the customary 10mm wedge of cat fur from the fan vent. Freddie loved sitting next to the computer, just where all that lovely heat was coming out. And it wasn't even a gaming laptop :) Still it was a good design, MX8716B; made 2007 and still going in 2016!
Then there was the time I received a frantic phone call from mother 120 miles away; the monitor on her computer was dead. Power light showing, caps lock on computer goes on/off when toggled, etc. Checked VGA cable - cat teeth marks all over it. Siri (short for Syringa Superba, her pedigree name - this was long before iPhones became popular) loved it so much, Mum had to fit hot water pipe cladding around all the exposed mains cables in the house, and the network cable too.
Yep, just googled that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXR5 . Never seen it before. Given that PAT is part of my job these days, I would surely notice it :)
Link to image in question (don't do it at home folks!):
https://www.vinyliciously.com/images/uploads/HAWKWIND---PXR5-2015-UK-Grey-2LP-2.jpg