Posts by John Brown (no body)

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Re: NMOC

Ooooh...me too. That's more than half-way to London for me :-)

Re: Depreciation

She was a pretty shit FD then. Everyone knows that kit has a selling cost, ie there is a cost to be factored in to the process of actually selling the item(s). If the deprecation is allowed to fall below the selling cost, then it costs more to dispose of it than it's sale price value. You get shot of it before that happens, unless it's being scrapped, in which case you price up the scrapping costs too. And annual depreciation of 15%? Sounds like she had no idea of lifecycles and was depreciating based on heavy machinery with a much longer expected lifetime. Even our company cars are depreciated at 25% to 33% annually.

The Tandy 1000 had a 3 channel AY-3-8910 sound chip in it and some games supported that. That would sound more like "8-bit tunes" than anything from the PC speaker. Maybe DOSBox needs setting to emulate the Tandy 1000 Sound device. Try setting machine=tandy in the config file.

On the other hand, I remember speech coming out of the basic PC speaker. Poorly, but understandable :-)

Re: Tractor beam on!

" iOmega ZIPdrive"

Was that the Apple version?

Re: A phrase to remember

Yeah, and I have a "friend" wondering how much for the TRS-80 Model 100 :-)

Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

Re: True story

"(spec'd, provided and installed by IBM, gratis!)"

Well, the electrical and RFI specs for devices in most countries usually specify that the device not only should not produce too much RFI but should also continue to work in the presence of RFI. So either IBM or Otis would be on the hook to resolve that situation :-)

But yeah, spotting it in the first place can be interesting and fun. Most often it's when a fresh pair of eyes turn up knowing that the people who already looked at it are good and will have tried all the obvious things already. The right pair of eyes with the right type of brain behind them knows it time to think outside the box.

...and very un-American, which is the opposite of what El Reg is trying to be. I submit Regonomizationizm as a suitable American-sounding replacement,

Re: Multi I/O Boards

Multi-I/O cards changed over time. Anything other than an original 8088/86 or 80286 based PC would likely have had the realtime clock on the motherboard, and the multi-I/O card would have been 16-bit and had FDD, HDD, parallel and one or two serial ports on them and most likely IDE-based by the time 486s came along.

Re: Not quite the same

It would probably have been cheaper just to fix the earthing problem in the vacuum cleaners!

Re: "Hairy jumper"

...and a vest is something else altogether :-)

ESA's Jupiter-bound Juice spacecraft has a sticky problem with its radar

I often wonder...

...how many of the people involved in these long term probe missions have in the back of their minds the likelihood that Starship will, over the next few years, make it much, much cheaper to send probes on higher velocity orbits and send newer, better and bigger probes that will get there faster merely by being able to boost a cheaper more fuel-filled probe into orbit for much less money.

A pint or three of barley Juice for everyone involved, it's still great science and engineering :-)

The end of Microsoft-brand peripherals is only Surface deep

Re: Ocean Plastic Mouse

Yeah, I noticed that too. It is, of course, recycled plastic, but showing that MS are not just being green by using recycled plastic, they are being "super green" by helping to clean the oceans too! I suppose the fact it's made from plastic recovered from the ocean makes the green-washing that bit easier since it's pre-washed plastic.

"For instance, I have a friend who swears by a trackball, whereas I have only ever sworn at it as it just doesn't work for me - each to their own."

Yeah, similar arguments can be had over trackpads and nipples :-)

Red Hat layoffs spark calls to unionize, CEO wades in

They are not all software engineers.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

Re: Truly, certainly not

Back to the FUTURE!!!! Where we're going, we don't need Windows! :-)

Re: Truly, certainly not

"Who knows, maybe with Windows 12 we'll finally get another version that looks pretty, consistent, finished and flexible. Not holding my breath."

Probably best not to, considering the time from Win 10 to Win11. Win12 is a few years away yet! I wonder if there'll be a Win13 eventually? Americans seem to be very wary of the number 13, at least in marketing terms, floor numbering etc.

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

It's most likely skewed by the large population of of the USA likely making the USA the largest contributor and almost certainly the largest consumer of articles.

Re: What is deemed harmful to kids ?

Most kids probably only access Wikipedia for homework reasons. Likely the same reason most kids would ever knowingly visit a religious site.

Re: The Lords said they felt that "anonymous age verification is possible."

Maybe, maybe not. Do you want Joe the binman[*] to be made a Lord to help redress the balance? Alan Sugar made it from London barrow boy (sort of!) to the Lords. Probably not the ideal example, but an example nonetheless.

* No offence to binmen. They do a vital job. But it's probably not ideal training to be one of the people sort of in charge of the country :-)

UK emergency services take DIY approach amid 12-year wait for comms upgrade

Re: Two systems cannot become one

"I'd also expect that having the existing radio strapped to the shoulder (as now), with a phone in a pocket for data duties is not as significant an issue as you might suspect."

If you watch any of those motorway cops type shows, they all seem to have two handsets, one strapped to each shoulder. I've always assumed it was radio + mobile phone, so carrying two devices seems to be SOP these days anyway.

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

Musk is deposed

Is it just me that kept reading that phrase in a different context to that intended?

"Tesla to actually do some advertising and point out the limitations of their software"

It'd be nice to see the court dish that out as part of the punishment, assuming Tesla lose. With the court having a veto on the adverts Tesla produce, ie there must be NO "spin" only the unvarnished "truth in advertising" :-)

NASA tweaks Voyager 2's power supply to avoid another sensor shutdown

Re: Amazing

"Expecting plenty of down votes by web site 'designers' and up votes from 'engineers'."

Don't worry, the coloured pencil and crayon department aren't technical enough to read El Reg. At time of posting, it's overwhelming clearly that it's mainly technical people reading here :-)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg!!!!!!. You mean Reliant Robins!!!

Yes, as we know from all the best SF shows, the answer is always "re-route the power to the sensors" or, "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"

US watchdog grounds SpaceX Starship after that explosion

Re: "It [...] was detonated over Boca Chica, Texas, within minutes of launch"

See icon --------------->

You'll have to imagine the pint of beer icon since I can't use two at once :-)

Re: What happened to the new Roadster? What do you think was in that nose cone?

"and think of the increase in the value of the only one in space currently. (clearly the most collectable car ever)."

Considering Muskolinis love of crypto, I'm surprised he's not auctioned it off as an NFT yet :-)

Elizabeth Holmes is not going to prison – for the moment

In the UK at least, sentence guidelines take into account all sorts of things from pleading guilty from the outset to whether remorse is shown etc. If there's a range available, I'd expect people who "play" the system and keep appealing and losing might get a longer sentence than someone who accepts the guilty verdict in the first place. But, as with so many court cases, it's always possible that the verdict is actually wrong for any of a number of reasons and so an appeals process is rightly part of the system. I think under UK law it is required that all known evidence is produced during the case and appeals are granted based on technical failures in the original case or if genuinely new evidence likely to affect the original verdict which can be shown to be not previously known to either party. From what I've seen of some US court cases, it seems like the defendants legal team only provide the minimum evidence they think they need to win the case. When they fail, they then appeal with the second string evidence they already knew about but didn't use. This seems to mean, as in this case, constant and seemingly never ending appeals over years.

Samsung to cough up third of a billion bucks for ripping off patent

We are pleased...

"We asked Samsung Electronics for a statement regarding the verdict in this case, but did not hear back from the company at the time if publication."

Samsung statement: We are pleased to receive the courts judgement and our lawyers are looking forward to discussing any and all possible grounds to appeal while sipping cocktails on their yachts in the Bahamas. (said with more of a grimace than a smile!)

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

Re: Washing Machine Fix

Staying young? :-)

Re: Washing Machine Fix

Yes, happy days when it was not seen as incredibly risky and instant dismissal to acquire some random bit of software and install it on corporate PCs. There were viruses around then, but thankfully relatively rare and usually a bit less vicious than nowadays, although even then, AV was part of the toolkit.

Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts

...or it means Cuadrilla are back in action :-)

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

Re: Wheels within Wheels

"I concluded he wanted that file to be found, to scare off some CS students, and I never did encounter a "flunk-out" CS course."

There may well have been an ulterior motive for a scheme which never actually materialised, but I don't think explanation adds up. After all, those who "discovered" said file would probably be those least likely to flunk out.

...and I'm sure we've all noticed that no matter the enforced password complexity, if the user is told there is a specified minium length to the password, that is the number of characters used. 8-16 character passwords allowed? 99% of users will have an 8 character password because they are forced into making it "complex" and the natural reaction to that is to not make it any more complex than it needs to be :-)

Microsoft not a Teams player as admin center, 365 service suffer partial outage

Re: "repeated the same disable component, save, re-enabled component, save process"

By the time you've installed the updates it's back down again there are more available to start the update cycle all over again

FTFY

"Someone remind me of the advantages of relying on other people's computers the cloud"

Well, I heard somewhere that your system will never run out of resources so long as you have enough money because "the cloud" can scale to meet your demands, so there will never be outages due to CPU or other over utilisation of resources :-)

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Happy Birthday Geeks Guide

I just checked, and it seems yesterday,, when I posted the above, was the actual 10th Birthday of Geeks Guide to Britain, Thu 21 Mar 2013. Happy Birthday Geeks Guide :-)

Re: Complexity ≠ Reliability

Motor gliders?

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

"What else could they do? World+dog saw their rocket blow up shortly after launch."

Well, before it even launched, they did show a montage of the all the previous Starship fails and crashes leading up to this. You don't see NASA, ESA or any of the others showing their previous explosion during a launch broadcast :-)

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

"It's called testing, the results being used to improve the next one."

True, but with its size and complexity, and 33 fairly expensive engine in Super Heavy alone, they can't really afford quite so many failures as they did with their "launch fast, fail often, iterate again" that they did with Falcon.

"The maiden flight failed"

That's about the only bit of your post that is true. Virgin Orbit went on to have a few successful launches from it's US base (since it's a US company, even if Brit Branson was the figurehead for it) before the final failed launch from the UK which you mistakenly appear to think was their first attempt.

"Ooh, this I did not know. Quite cool."

New here? :-)

El Reg article on Black Arrow and British rocketry, part of El Regs Geeks Guide to Britain started back in 2013. Great if you want to kill a wet weekend or three just reading the articles. Even better to dispose of much of you spare time visiting the places most articles come with travel advice and GPS co-ordinates to visit in person.

Not sure of the hard copy edition is still available, but the commentard created Interactive map (Sadly not up to date) is still online.

I wonder if El Reg will be doing a special 10 year anniversary edition?

Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes

Re: Those are rookie numbers

Yeahbut, would they charge extra for an inside seat or an outside seat?

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

Re: They should have called...

And the other famously loyal Scottish freedom and independence supporter Sean Connery lived in Spain, France, Greece, the Bahamas etc and while claiming he paid his taxes and wasn't an "exile", he didn't turn up to support the SNP referendum because he could only spend limited time in the UK without affecting his "tax exile" status LOL

He donated heavily to the SNP but I don't think any of that was ring-fenced for pothole repairs.

Re: It's how they fix potholes that makes them bigger.

"In this country that wouldn't have been a problem (in fact, probably joyous since iut would be a nice smooth surface) but, in France, the final part of the process involves scattering a CM or so of loose gravel over the whole of the fresh surface - presumably so that cars will drive over it and embed it in the fresh tarmac to help make it last."

That's pretty common in the UK too. Many rural roads, some quite major, are "dressed" that way and are signed at 15-20mph for weeks if not months with no road marking while the gravel is "worked in" by the vehicles passing over. The main A19 south into York (the single carriageway bit south of Thirsk), is a good example of a fairly major road that seems get re-done every few years and cause no end of slow-downs for most people with the occasional spray of paint chipping gravel caused by the impatient BMW drivers either oncoming or just ignoring the "No Overtaking" signs.

And he does look a bit Manic :-)

Having one in place doesn't preclude having another in another place :-)

Re: The problem with that ...

"Sounds like the roads need simple old leveling, rather than leveling up :)"

Move them to Somerset? That's got levels already :-)

Smallsats + solar sails = Photos of exoplanets at 1970s digital camera resolution

Re: For theose who want to know how this woudl work.

Ah, so a bit like the airborne horse camera(s) shot then?

Re: Disposable Camera

* It's definitely not a "satellite"! A satellite's definition is "something orbiting something else".

So, a probe then? (oo'er Missus!)

From the subjects POV, we a re the aliens taking the phots with our probe --------------->