Posts by Martin Howe

Introducing Windows on arm. And by arm, we mean wrist

Unless it can run Doom, I'll be giving it a miss

Malware in Lisp? Now you're just being cruel

Wow, no love for the granddaddy of them all? (Spoilers: https://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html)

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

Re: Very Curious

Seen this myself :)

https://www.quora.com/Are-Chinas-largest-supercomputers-using-Sunway-CPUs-actually-based-on-reverse-engineered-American-DEC-Alpha-CPUs-from-the-1990s

As for the cost of Alpha, I rather suspect that DEC's decision not to sell the things to Apple in the early 1990s for what became the PowerMac series was probably what finally brought DEC down; if we could have had 64 bit processors and programs on the desktop in 1995, the world would be a better place now and DEC might still exist :(

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

Re: Brainless thief

RML 480Z Yep! One of the most comfortable and rock solid computer keyboards I have ever used :)

WINE 10 is still not an emulator, but Windows apps won't know the difference

I found to my surprise that running wine with an old-skool MS-DOS executable automatically fires up DosBox to run it in.

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

Android guilty too

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.

Telco security is a dumpster fire and everyone's getting burned

Re: I would fix security, but its against the law!

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 )

Wish there was a benchmark for ML safety? Allow us to AILuminate you...

The only safety measure for AI is rm -fr ${AI_SOFTWARE_ROOT_DIRECTORY}

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Never mind the WWW, a NeXT system was used to make something far more useful: DOOM :)

Win 11 refreshes delayed, say PC makers – and here's why

Re: "Everybody's going to want that."

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 :)

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

When buying a big 4K monitor I had a devil of a job finding one without a TV tuner or smart stuff inside it; I only watch movies and such via the computer and don't need a TV.

Lego's Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can build for the price of a fancy dinner

Nevermind Concorde - wonder if you could build a TSR-2 with that? You already have the engines :)

Survey finds that four in five enterprise endpoints could run Windows 11

Of modern Windows 11 is the least bad ... but only after neutering it

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 :)

EU gave CrowdStrike the keys to the Windows kernel, claims Microsoft

Silly question, but why doesn't CrowdStrike create a system restore point every time it updates itself? Many program do this in their installer. There's your bootable "last known good" right there. Presumably there's a reason why this wasn't done or wouldn't have worked?

The Clacktop: A Thinkpad Yoga with a mechanical keyboard

"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 :(

Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

Re: Major crisis averted - just

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 :)

64% of people not happy about idea of AI-generated customer service

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.

HP BIOS update renders some ProBook laptops expensive paperweights

Re: Time for a class action lawsuit

In the UK, Computer Misuse Act 1990 could also apply.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

Re: Aaron?

Yep! Remember it fondly. The Day the Law Died.

.

Sir, the citizens are revolting!

Tell me something I *don't* know.

No sir, you don't understand, they're rioting all over the city!

They WHAT? They DARE!

.

Love that little exchange :)

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Re: Preparing for October 2025

THIS.

"The sad thing is that it's not so much that Linux made a compelling case for people to move to it, but that Microsoft made a compelling case to move away from Windows."

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

Re: F-104 experience

An aircraft so bad a former Hawkwind frontman made a record about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Lockheed_and_the_Starfighters

The 15-inch MacBook Air just nails it

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.

Windows users can soon ditch Bing, Edge, other bundleware – but only in the EU

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 :(

NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028

Re: For UK readers

Heck, I remember when it was Key Markets. Now get off my lawn :P

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

Re: Real Sanitizers

We use it to get rid of the outer layer of melting rubber surfaces of very old feature phones or melting rubber foot pads on 2007 era PCs :)

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Best known for audio? Not if you're a computer architect :)

"... 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.

Intel mulls cutting ties to 16 and 32-bit support

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 :)

Hey, GitHub, can you create an array compare function without breaking the GPL?

How dare GitHub make a function to provide code for blindly copying into a program - that's Stack Overflow's job

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

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, that canary in PC coal mine, just fell off its perch

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'.

Boffins grow human brain cells to play Pong

But can it play Doom?

Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of

Re: Vital detail missing

Might be Budgens in Holt (Norfolk) a couple years ago - electrical fire in the roof burned the place to the ground (no flare gun required :P) .

Block this: Using satellites to plaster ads over our skies could work, say boffins

Re: What do you mean, "It's been done?"

Opening scene from 'Judge Dredd: Loonies Moon' in 2000AD Prog 192:

https://twitter.com/ben_towle/status/1053380256839729152/photo/1

What do you mean, "It's been done?"

In early issues of 2000AD, in Judge Dredd, there were companies competing to project ads onto the Moon. How long before the technology to do this is available?

How to get Linux onto a non-approved laptop

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

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Stop judging Microsoft on what it did a decade ago and judge it by what it's doing today.

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!

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

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.

-Werror pain persists as Linus Torvalds issues Linux 5.15rc2

Intel tried to kill it and it still won't die

"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 :)

Microsoft emits last preview of .NET 6 and C# 10, but is C# becoming as complex as C++?

"... failed attempt at EEE on Java."

What is EEE, please? Google throws up nothing but pages of irrelevant results :(

Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU

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).

Sucks to be you, any aliens living anywhere near Proxima Centauri's record-smashing solar flare

I wonder anyone sought a place of safety in the sky, and if so, did their fathers know? :)

Nvidia cripples Ethereum mining on GeForce RTX 3060 to deter crypto bods from nabbing all the kit at launch

Lisa Su says: "Thanks guys, check is in the mail"

Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system

Thrillenium Bug?

But what is Tharg going to call 2000AD in the year 3000?

Cisco intros desktop switches, one with USB-C to power your laptop

"Web technologies bloating even further to the point where a "Hello World" website is a couple of terabytes or so.."

Dunno about the web, but on desktop, I'm sure MICROS~1 can arrange that for you :p

UK network Three hikes pay-as-you-go rates by 400% to push punters to buy 'bundles'

Re: Maybe not

Plusnet use EE's network.

Suckers for punishment, we added a crawler transporter to our Saturn V

They beat Gerry Anderson to the punch

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 :)

Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

Re: Future proofing size constraints

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 :(

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

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 :)

Dodgy procedures doomed Arianespace's Vega before it even left the launchpad

Re: plug it in right or you're going to get a melted component

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