Posts by Borg.King 219 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Apr 2011
Common Hardware Reference Platform.
The intention was to allow third party manufacturers to create alternative 'blessed' Macs and compete with the proliferation of Windows PCs. I believe SJ ended the program when he realized it would cut deeply into Apple's hardware revenue.
I did some work on the CHRP in the 1990s as it included a parallel port, which would have been very useful for driving the plethora of PC compatible printers.
A former lecturer of mine at college in the 1980s once told me that the very first US to UK transmission involved a US generator and a US TV set hooked up to the incoming signal, and a UK TV camera pointed at said TV set, whose brightness was fully turned up to get enough persistence on the phosphors for the camera to even /see/ anything.
I believe he had been a GPO engineer during the period.
That's what I saw too. The gimbal feedback was all over the place at one point, and the altitude dropped steadily from 500k feet to 244k feet before everything froze.
My guess (and it's only that) is the fairing over the payload did not properly release and the second stage + payload was off balance.
A decade ago I was contracting at a largish corporation not too distant from me here in the sunny north-west of this left pondian country.
Contractors were given what I can only describe as the best of the unused machines, usually the discarded PC of the person who had just left and you were replacing. Other unwanted machines were placed in the corridors outside offices, and in the corners of the buildings etc. ready to be 'recycled'. It was standard operating procedure to scavenge whatever improvements you could get to enhance the machine you'd been allocated.
I used Multics when at Brunel University in the early 80s, however its performance dropped off a cliff when a half dozen emacs sessions were started.
Once a few VAX systems were installed elsewhere on campus though, the Multics system was no longer the golden child, and as less people used it, the fun factor increased many fold.
How do you pour a few gallons of electricity into a battery?
You bring in a portable generator. Power companies have been utilizing just such truck mounted portable generators to cover times when a major part of the distribution grid requires maintenance or replacement. The largest of these are powered by jet engines, which presumably could even be run on biofuels these days.
Last time I paid a tax preparer to file my taxes cost me $350 about 3 years ago, and he missed a huge double income entry that would have cost me $50k in extra tax if I hadn't spotted it.
TurboTax cost me ~$150 this year, but I have about 10 more forms beyond the 1040, so I'm not unduly disturbed by that fee.
U.S. Tax needs to be overhauled. All the statements you get (W2, 1099's etc.) need just two boxes
1: Income,
2: Deductions/Already paid.
Enter all the box 1's and 2's into a website, or an app, it does the straightforward math (verifiable by a nice simple step by step help document), and send a check, or get a refund. It doesn't matter what the amounts are for.
If you can swing business class for short trips, you can avoid the extra baggage fees, and use the airline lounge to get free food and coffee, and the extra cost overall might only be a few quid. Saves having to file those receipts for separate purchases at the airport. Your in-flight meal and drinks are unlikely to be extra cost options in business class too.
Likewise if your hotel includes WiFi and breakfast in the room rate, two fewer expense claims to file afterwards as well.
"What tremendous value TheRegister is. I wish all the critics would stop whining about it. I would willingly pay £400 a year to support TheRegister."
"£32 for TheRegister, it's far too low. The excellent service TheRegister provides, it should be at least £400"
"TheRegister is quite magnificent. It justifies the fee on it's own. Personally I think the fee is too low. I would willingly sell my house and all its contents to help TheRegister".
(I might have paraphrased a bit.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lzS8yW8INA
EPROM burner with a hex keyboard, you 'ad it lucky.
I had to build my own EPROM burner from Veroboard and stick it into the back of a Commodore 64, AND write the burner program, in BASIC, AND create the EPROM contents as DATA statements in the burner program.
<Beer, because after all that, I needed one, or 0x02>
Once had a week in Malta on a C++ training course. First day there was the world cup final, which I happily watched from a beachfront pizza and beer joint.
Second one was a day trip to give some training in Germany, flight out of LGW at 6am, back at 6pm. Not much to in the way of excitement, and a buffet lunch in the conference room, but the trainees were nice people and it's a day out.
Do half a dozen Apple WWDC's in San Francisco count?
My panel here in my house in Seattle has two 115 volt lines, 180° out of phase, and 100A per line, for a total possible 23kVA.
My water heater, tumble dryer and oven are all connected across the phases, applying 230V to their respective heating elements. This is fairly typical for a modern home in the U.S.
In my (wood) workshop, I have a single phase 230V dust collector connected via a 1:1 isolation transformer wired across the phases. This is not typical.
Have flown many 747s from SFO, LAX and SEA to LHR, AMS & CDG and will miss the slightly shorter journey times as 747s fly about 80 knots faster than 777s and 787s.
Only flew once in first class, on a Singapore 747-400(?) from Mumbai to LHR back in 1991. Great airline, plane, and exceptional service from the cabin crew - a true memory to savor for many years.
I've plans to build my own little cupboard full of little toys with blinken lights.
Cable Modem, MoCA ethernet, Gigabit switch, Cable TV amp and distribution hub, Networked HD, security system DVR, Philips Hue Hub (probably two), Time Machine HD, and the control unit for my irrigation system.
And a UPS.
Philips, please don't deprive me of my dream.
Anyone buying these overpriced monitors is almost certainly going to have some production desk setup, with high quality arms already installed supporting the VESA mount.
I would estimate that only a few would want Apple's stand anyway, and that few has now diminished significantly. Apple may make a few thousand of them. The $199 VESA adaptor is a rip off too.
Third party opportunity if ever there was one.
Then we were enticed to work for Microsoft with promises of changing the world. Sadly that reality never materialized and we left to go back into the real world.
Microsoft has many smart people working for it, and almost all of them are as perplexed as you as to why they cannot produce products that reflect their abilities.
(Mines the one with the deactivated blue badge in the pocket)
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