Posts by Stumpy

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Or even the BBC Micro's Advanced User Guide. This is what system manuals should be like.

https://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essentials/BBC%20Microcomputer%20Advanced%20User%20Guide.pdf

Infosys launches 'sonic identity' – an aural logo to 'reinforce brand purpose'

Bollocks like this really really makes me want to vomit.

SSD missing from SAP datacenter turns up on eBay, sparking security investigation

Re: SAP takes data security very seriously.

... at least, not five times in two years.

UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?

Re: Not a bad record. I'll give him some slack for being in the Apple camp for too long.

I'm reading this on my 2015 MacBook Pro (yes, bought new, and was the last laptop I bought). Still going strong and still a more than capable machine for general day to day usage and development work.

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

Re: Hot stuff

Good on you for following through with plod. I suspect many people would simply have shrugged, wiped the disk and reinstalled.

Keeping your head as an entire database goes pear-shaped

Re: Backups

Back in my early days as a VMS operator, the IT director once came down into Ops central, marched onto the machine floor and boldly flipped the Big Red Switch that switched the power off to the entire data floor.

Cue clenched sphincters as we waited (and waited ... and waited) for the backup generators to kick in before the UPS died. Then they marched out and simply said, "We've had a power failure. Call DEC and put the disaster recovery plan into action."

This was, apparently their way of conducting a full resilience test - no, DEC had not been pre-informed of the test either - as far as they were aware, it was a genuine disaster - and the recovery plan involved them trucking in duplicate hardware for all our key machines on what was effectively a mobile data centre. Must have cost [i]someone[/i] a hell of a lot of cash to put that thing into mobilisation.

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

Re: I wonder how many people still remember how to use it?

I started my career as a VMS operator. Can't remember a blasted thing about it these days though. I'd be totally lost without a comprehensive manual now.

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

He did a similar one on networking back in '96: https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-05-02

Re: I bow before such experience

5.25" discs could quite easily be punched in the corner and filed in a ring binder. So long as you were careful as to where you put the hole... far easier to simply get some ring-bound slipcases instead.

Any fool can write a language: It takes compilers to save the world

Re: "Any fool can write a language"

In a similar vein, I once had to unpick a C program written by an ex-COBOL programmer.

Christ, that was a nightmare. Around 1500 lines of COBOL-like C ... all in a single main() function.

BOFH: Putting the gross in gross insubordination

Re: The Rule of Two

This is The Way.

Desperately seeking SaaS: English council to replace Oracle R12

Re: There needs to be an AAAAAAA icon

Only 40? I'm surprised that the number of integrations isn't higher to be honest.

Reality check: We should not expect our communications to remain private

Re: Do not have a poll with a negative in it

Indeed, and I, for one, have just fallen into that trap! And with seemingly no mechanism available to go back and change my selection.

Poor form, El Reg. Poor form.

No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish

Re: Simples...

It's quite unfair to refer to users as 'tools'.

The robots are coming! 12 million jobs lost to automation in Europe by 2040 – analyst

Didn't we hear the same arguments when automation and robotics became commonplace in the Automobile/Manufacturing industries, or in the business world when computers first started appearing in the office?

The reality is that some jobs will invariably go. However, it is far more likely than not that a whole raft of new jobs and industries will spring up around those industries that have automated. After all, someone needs to program the computers and service the robots.

Analysts simply attempting to scaremonger as usual.

Logitech Signature M650: A mouse that will barely emit a squeak or a clickety-click

I find giving them a wipe down with a piece of kitchen paper moistened with Isopropyl alcohol (or surgical spirits) tends to get them back into fighting shape and removes the stickiness.

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Re: Failure of capitalism

Did it? I certainly don't remember it ever shipping with any antivirus/malware tools. Can't find any info from a search of the interwebs either.

I'm curious now, as to what it actually was.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a coding puzzle and it's a doozy

Re: I challenge you to use a better language...

Someone I know is trying to see how far they can go using Sinclair Basic on a Spectrum 128

A lightbulb moment comes too late to save a mainframe engineer's blushes

Re: I had a somewhat similar problem

Ahhh ... the 'fun button'. Always a good prank when group riding and pulled up at the lights. Get someone to the left of the rider to distract them whilst someone on the right of the rider flicks the kill switch to the off setting just as the lights change to green.

In the '80s, spaceflight sim Elite was nothing short of magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done

Re: Joysticks

I suspect the original poster was referring to the 32-bit Acorn Archimedes, since that was the only Acorn machine that ran with shaded graphics. BBC was pure wireframe.

Boffins use nuclear radiation to send data wirelessly

Re: How about a really large archive?

I was just thinking that ... a large atom bomb that not only obliterates it's target, but also transmits the message 'Fuck You Putin!'

Pack your bags – we may have found the first planet outside of our galaxy

Re: Colonization

Indeed, but extinction is a hard way to learn the lesson for future generations.

Orders wrong, resellers receiving wrong items? Must be a programming error and certainly not a rushing techie

Re: Punch cards?

Of course, a true pedant would have insisted they be referred to as Hollerith Cards.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

If Oracle haven't already trademarked it, I would suggest the simple. 'Evil Corp.' for their new name.

Re: It doesn’t need a new name

Zuck can't be a c**t. He has neither enough depth or warmth.

If you're Intel, self-driving cars look an awful lot like PCs

Re: Trickle-down effect?

Frankly, autonomous vehicles need to be built with lifetime updates in mind. Not necessarily for new features, but certainly for updates to core function.

Anything less, and the autonomous functions will degrade to the point of uselessness and/or danger, and I would strongly foresee lawsuits being bought against the manufacturers that let their vehicles get into that state.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

I'm currently crying like a baby here. This has hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. This marks the end of the line for the largest chuink of my formative years, and possibly the greatest influence in my entering the career I have.

RIP to a massively flawed genius. A man with ideas often far ahead of their time. I'll be setting a glass of decent malt aside for you tonight.

Catch of the day... for Google, anyway: Transatlantic Cornwall cable hauled ashore

Man, that's disappointing. When I think of undersea cables, I still envisage an armoured cable that's several inches in diameter. Not that piddly little thing they've hauled ashore.

Off yer bike: Apple warns motorcycles could shake iPhone cameras out of focus forever

Re: What did you expect?

But if you ride your bike on the roads in Surrey, your phone would probably have an easier time off-road.

Real world not giving you enough anxiety? Try being hunted down by the perfect organism in Alien: Isolation

Rather than play the base game, get the mods that allow it to run in VR. Puts a whole different spin on it -- I modded it not long after it first released and played through my DK2 ... man, was it terrifying!

'No peeing towards Russia' sign appears on country's Arctic border with Norway

Re: Covered by cameras....

Well, they do, but they're currently languishing in a Siberian Gulag

Google's newest cloud region taken out by 'transient voltage' that rebooted network kit

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/908

Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly

Re: Quick learner

Hell, I'd struggle to master the suave shoulder sweep right at the end...

Woman sues McDonald's for $14 after cheeseburger ad did exactly what it's designed to

Re: The Sin of Gluttony

To be fair, the angle he's taken has struck a chord.

Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall

Re: Indian Standards

According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know) ... it is, indeed, a serious standard.

Happy 60th, Sinclair Radionics: We'll remember you for your revolutionary calculators and crap watches

Re: Sinclair pocket calculator

It's because the early calculators didn't actually have a square root function properly programmed either in their software or in the hardware. Instead they used Taylor Polynomials to approximate the answers so would always be slightly off when it came to rounding to a fixed number of decimals.

Taylor expansion for sqrt(x)

Imagine a world where Apple shacked up with Xerox in the '80s: How might it look today?

Re: Big credit

Absolutely. Although Doug Engelbart seemed to have a pretty good handle on it back in '68:

The Mother of all Demos (Douglas Engelbart) - YouTube link

11-year-old graduate announces plans to achieve immortality by 'replacing body parts with mechanical parts'

Re: I for one

"A kid this smart might be capable of ending endless suffering for all humans if properly prepared."

There. FTFY.

New mystery AWS product 'Infinidash' goes viral — despite being entirely fictional

You can bet I'll be adding it to mine :-)

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

Re: With apologies to HG-

I still think Jeff Wayne put it better.

Wish you could play tabletop Dungeons & Dragons but have no friends? Solasta: Crown of the Magister offers a solution

Re: Play By Email.

True, but for a chess fix, there's always chess.com or kasparovchess.com

Re: Play By Email.

Not just PBEmail, but there's also plenty of forums for PBP gaming too.

I'm currently in several games over at Mythweavers and RPG Crossing. Plenty of other sites out there too.

Hungover Brits declare full English breakfast the solution to all their ills

Never even heard of Mezzo Mix before ... strangely though I now want to try it.

There's two solutions I have for avoiding a hangover.

The first is to mix up a Muddy Puddle first thing in the morning (1/2 Pint Full-fat Coke + 1/2 Pint fresh OJ) and chug it.

The other is simply to not stop drinking in the first place.

Mayflower, the AI ship sent to sail from the UK to the US with no humans, made it three days before breaking down

The beatings will continue until morale improves...

Remember, Happiness is Mandatory Citizen. Welcome to Alpha Complex. The Computer is your friend.

BOFH: But we think the UK tax authorities would be VERY interested in how we used COVID support packages

Re: Stairwell or Elevator

Yep, it's not the falling that gets them. It's the stopping.

Cloudflare stops offering to block LGBTQ webpages

Re: Cloudflare stops offering to block LGBTQ webpages

To be fair though, The Grauniad is often not consistent in the letters they use in any words they print.

Known software issue grounds Ingenuity Mars copter as it attempted fourth flight

Re: Ace PFY skills

Works every time...

IT Crowd - Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Good: Water vapor signal detected for first time on distant planet. Bad: Er, we'll let one of the boffins explain

Re: Hmm ...

I'd hate to be the Deliveroo rider fulfilling those orders though.