Or even the BBC Micro's Advanced User Guide. This is what system manuals should be like.
Posts by Stumpy
448 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2010
We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?
Infosys launches 'sonic identity' – an aural logo to 'reinforce brand purpose'
SSD missing from SAP datacenter turns up on eBay, sparking security investigation
UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?
Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked
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
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
Any fool can write a language: It takes compilers to save the world
BOFH: Putting the gross in gross insubordination
Desperately seeking SaaS: English council to replace Oracle R12
Reality check: We should not expect our communications to remain private
No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish
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
No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a coding puzzle and it's a doozy
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
Boffins use nuclear radiation to send data wirelessly
Pack your bags – we may have found the first planet outside of our galaxy
Orders wrong, resellers receiving wrong items? Must be a programming error and certainly not a rushing techie
Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids
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
Off yer bike: Apple warns motorcycles could shake iPhone cameras out of focus forever
Real world not giving you enough anxiety? Try being hunted down by the perfect organism in Alien: Isolation
'No peeing towards Russia' sign appears on country's Arctic border with Norway
Google's newest cloud region taken out by 'transient voltage' that rebooted network kit
Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly
Woman sues McDonald's for $14 after cheeseburger ad did exactly what it's designed to
Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall
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.
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:
11-year-old graduate announces plans to achieve immortality by 'replacing body parts with mechanical parts'
New mystery AWS product 'Infinidash' goes viral — despite being entirely fictional
Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone
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.