Posts by 45RPM

Is this cuttlefish really all that cosmic? Ubuntu 18.10 arrives with extra spit, polish, 4.18 kernel

I used to be a big fan of Ubuntu - and I still think that it’s an excellent OS, but…

The problem is that there are other, excellenter (sic), free OSs out there. Mint is lovely and as refreshing as its namesake (it’s what Ubuntu should be in my view). Elementary is shaping up very nicely - and, although it’s not a Linux variant, Haiku looks like it might be worth a bash.

At any rate, I’m a little bit fed up with the constant fiddling with the Ubuntu UI. Menus in the bar, menus out of the bar, Unity, Gnome, you put your left leg in. Simmer down Canonical. Pick a UI - and then stick to it, please!

Good news: Largest, most ancient known galaxy supercluster is spotted. Bad news: It's collapsing on itself

Is collapsing? Collapsed it has, I would say? Mmm?

With sorry Soyuz stuffed, who's going to run NASA's space station taxi service now?

If Russia’s space taxi is broken, why can’t they just get an Über?

The only way is up, baby: IBM UK sales down, profit down, headcount down

Re: Possibly unsurprising…

@AMBxx

But how did you get into that spiral?

Let’s not forget that Apple was in that spiral once. Sure, to get out of it they had to slash product lines - but they didn’t put the money ‘saved’ into the bank. They invested it in their core business.

But even if your brand is so far gone, so toxic, that it’s beyond redemption, you can still rebrand and invest to pull back from the brink. Even IBM tried it once, with a cheap PC sub-brand - Ambra. Actually forget that one. It didn’t work out so well either!

Re: Possibly unsurprising…

@Ledswinger

True enough. And many more which have gone bust by being starved of investment and resources. "A penny saved is a penny earned" has got to go down in history as one the most fat headed, fatuous sentiments ever uttered.

The sentiment of the original maxim, "a penny saved is two pence clear", is abused beyond its capacity in order to fit it into an accountants excuse for not investing in a business.

Possibly unsurprising…

…given the poisonous Accountant Mantra ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’. Poisonous because they save money by cutting projects, cutting staff, cutting hardware expenditure - and then pat themselves on the pat, claiming to have ‘earned’ millions.

A more forward thinking mantra is ‘you have to spend a penny to earn a penny’ or ‘as ye sow, so ye shall reap’. In other words, invest, invest, invest - and then you’ll see the pennies come pouring in.

Don't get THAT personal, says personalised cards firm Moonpig. Dick pics. They mean dick pics

What about hog bottoms?

It is in their name, after all, so surely it can’t be against their T&Cs…

Apple's dark-horse macOS Mojave is out (and it's already pwned)

Re: Lame name :(

I still have a soft spot for Mac OS “Harmony”. Happy days.

And while we’re talking code names, I still run Hulk Hogan on my Green Jade and Speedbump 650 computers. Harmony runs on Vail.

UKIP flogs latex love gloves: Because Brexit means Brexit

Don’t know much biology but…

How much risk is there that they’d get their hand pregnant? Coz I can’t see much chance of the young UKIPer being allowed to put it anywhere else…

Deliveroo to bike food to hungry fanbois queuing to buy iPhones

Re: Well....

@Pete Smith 2

I know. I made it the way I like it. 2 bacon, 2 eggs and Napalm Sauce.

Re: Well....

I’d rather have a (bacon and) fried egg sandwich with chilli sauce. It’s a state of the art sarnie. It's like a cross between food and bowel surgery.

Mind you, I can’t think of many things I’d rather be doing less than queuing for some new gewgaw - but I suppose that queuing whilst paying over the odds for a hipsterish sandwich is one of them.

Never mind Brexit. UK must fling more £billions at nuke subs, say MPs

@DavCrav

A fair point - and one doesn’t have to go as far as Africa. Consider the suspiciously reasonable investments made in the UK by China. Not that I blame them, you understand. We’re letting it happen. And Brexit will just make matters worse.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had some close neighbours, who were (broadly speaking) culturally aligned with us, who weren’t led by some dangerously unstable toddler, and who represented one of the worlds largest economic superpowers - around $20trillion GDP should be enough - so that we could share this expense? Neighbours who’d demonstrate their willingness to give us a hand when we capriciously dispose of some perfectly good sub-hunter aircraft, and so do the job for us.

Then, perhaps, we wouldn’t need quite so many subs. Perhaps we could also save money on border checks for goods as well, and a great many other things.

Or maybe Teresa May really has found the Magic Money Tree. Which will also be used to eradicate poverty and homelessness on this island, providing more aid to Africa than any country evarh (including China), rebuilding the NHS - and, I’m sure, a great many other things besides.

In a race to 5G, Trump has stuck a ball-and-chain on America's leg

I don’t understand…

…I thought he said that trade wars are easy to win? He didn’t say which side for, of course. Presumably, if you’re on the wrong side, then they’re easy to lose too. Which would mean that trade wars are hard to win, from one perspective. But if both sides are trying to win then maybe it’s easy for both sides to lose and…

…my brain hurts.

UK.gov isn't ready for no-deal Brexit – and 'secrecy' means businesses won't be either

Re: Hmm

I think that, given the lack of democratic process in this whole debacle, I can lay the blame squarely at the door of the promoters of Brexit.

The terms of the referendum were that it was advisory only (if you don’t believe me, go and reread them for yourself here - https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/HoCL.PNG). This is important because some people voted in a deliberately contrary way in order to give Cameron’s government a bit of a prod - it is arguable that many might not have voted in this manner (or, perhaps, at all) if they’d realised the consequences.

In any case, the vote was so close that UKIP themselves were gearing up to demand a rerun if it had been so close the other way. There’s a difference though - if we’d voted to remain we could still have another Brexit referendum in the future, ad infinitum. Since we apparently voted to leave, by the slimmest of margins, and since the government is hell bent on following the wishes of the far right, we’ll get no chances of a do-over. We’ll already have committed economic, political and diplomatic suicide. There’s no going back.

It is self evident that the only sensible course of action is to rerun the referendum, and even in the event of a close vote, withdraw from Brexit. Make no mistake, this disaster will have caused significant damage even if we do - we can’t go back to the way things were before Farage and his lunatic fringe began to get their way, we can’t regain the trust that we’ve squandered or reclaim the organisations which have now left us for friendlier European nations, but we can (perhaps) stop a bad situation from getting any worse.

US govt concedes that you can indeed f**k Nazis online: Domain-name swear ban lifted

Re: Don't worry, it won't last

@veti

How do you get to that conclusion? Ultimately, I’d say that, with his repeal of net neutrality laws, and his repeated cries of Fake News and claims that journalist are the enemy of the state he’s done more to damage free speech than anyone in the US since McCarthy.

Certainly, he’s supported the right of the far right to espouse and promote online some of the most vile and socially undesirable concepts - but that isn’t the same thing as supporting free speech at all. In fact, paradoxically*, to truly support free speech it may be necessary to suppress some extremist (right or left) publications (however they’re delivered - on paper, on air or on line)

*Poppers Paradox which states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

Apple in XS new sensation: Latest iPhone carries XS-sive price tag

Re: Quote of the year...

@tea hound

*blushes* Why thank you. I assure you that such wit was quite accidental.

Re: What now?

@MrBanana

A grand is expensive - but is it too much? I’m not sure that it is. Bear with me on this. I’m about to indulge in some high octane devils advocacy.

Once upon a time (the 1980s) a mobile phone cost as much as a car, a ‘humble’ ZX Spectrum cost the equivalent of 800 nicker (and still didn’t have any built in storage or a display). These costs covered R&D for hardware, R&D for software, manufacture (not in a sweatshop) and this mysterious thing called a ‘profit’.

Nowadays, ‘free’ or as close to as possible is the preferred price point. No one wants to pay for software and shitty, cheaply built, hardware rules the roost. Sure, it doesn’t last long - it who cares? It was cheap! Yay! Many mobile phone manufacturers don’t make a profit - it’s a loss leader (for whom though, I wonder) and I wonder why they bother. Similarly, I can’t see the profit in a sub £100 tablet, and still these things get shovelled from sweatshop to landfill with a brief interlude with user.

So I look back to the 1980s, when everything was better and we could cheerfully sing ‘Hold a Chicken in the Air’ whilst walking to the Grundig rental store because the telly wasn’t working and the Ford Orion has broken down again. Prices were higher, adjusted for inflation, but they were the right price - and it seems to me that competition today has driven prices to being too damn cheap.

So yes, these new phones are expensive, no I can’t afford one (but, luckily, my iPhone siX is still quick and works perfectly) - but I don’t think that these new phones are too pricey for what they are. I’m sure that they’ll sell by the boatload - and look on the bright side, they’ll probably be cheaper than whatever gets pushed out next year!

World's oldest URL – fragments 73,000 years old – discovered in cave

It’s a bit of a stretch to call it a hashtag, but it still makes more sense than any of Donald Trump’s tweets.

Top antivirus tool nuked from macOS App Store – after it phoned browser histories to China

Re: The first thing that struck me?

@ac

Technically (and I realise that you're engaging in a little light-hearted humorous trolling), macOS has trojans (like this) by the boat load (ro-ro). It has viruses, adware and malware in rather smaller numbers (perhaps a bus load). It has no worms, as far as I'm aware.

I have run anti-virus software on my Mac since I first got one (System 6 days), and even then there were viruses.

Even when macOS X came out (for a few years after launch (before macOS got fashionable) there were no viruses, adware or malware - just a few trojans) I kept running AV software (ClamXAV), because ClamXAV software also scans for non-Mac malware (and I didn't want to pass on a bug, even if my machine was immune).

Of course, I continue to run AV software because macOS, Linux and Windows are all plagued now.

Re: That's the problem with AV apps

@DougS

Well, in my experience… I thought that they did. They certainly don't seem to spend any less time buggering around over my macOS noodlings than they do over my iOS efforts. I supposed that they were carrying out (entirely necessary) due diligence. But I'm slightly miffed if they reject (as they occasionally do) one of my apps over a minor meta-data transgression and yet allow something this monumentally nasty through.

Humpf. (goes off to sulk)

Re: That's the problem with AV apps

@DougS

Where does iOS and Android come into it? This is about the Mac App Store. And of course the Mac App Store isn’t totally safe - even just using the computer as stock, with no additional software, isn’t completely safe (unless you’re using it in a bunker with no network connection). This is, and this applies to all platforms, about degrees of risk.

Safest is to use it as stock with software updates from the OS vendor only.

Next safest is to install only software from major vendors via the App Store

Next is to install only signed software from major vendors via other means, or software from any other bugger on the App Store

Then signed software from any other bugger.

Then unsigned software that you believe to be safe.

Then riskiest is to install stuff like ILuvPussy, which will purports to display pictures of fresh cats every day, and which was acquired from specialist website pop ups on the seedy underbelly of the Internet.

Activists raise alarm over insidious creep of surveillance in the UK

Re: "Do any of those topics interest you?"

@gypsythief

I’m not as young as I used to be (who is?) and I’ll be buggered if I’m going to stand at the stove for hours stirring the jam, hence the need for a stool.

The jam might be damson, plum, blackberry, blackcurrant, gooseberry or strawberry - because those are the fruits a) that I grew, b) that are suitable for jamming and c) that I have in sufficient quantity. The crabapple will be made into jelly.

The courgettes will most likely be eaten fried with garlic, or in a risotto - or turned to chutney.

Re: "With the rise of the far right,"

@AC

A far more pressing concern is trolls hijacking threads to try and change the subject to whatever it is they happen to want to talk about.

What would you rather talk about? Trolls perhaps? Conversation (whether in meatspace or cyberspace) evolves and can end up far away from the original topic. That's part of what makes it interesting. The problem comes when someone butts into the conversation, and tries to forcibly wrest the subject onto something different (Trolls, for example) rather than letting it naturally wend its way there.

But if you really want to change the subject to whatever it is I happen to want to talk about, we'll be discussing classic cars (and, in particular, the merits of installing an electronic ignition system), retro computers, the cabinet I happen to be making from a very nice piece of oak, my plans for a new shed, whether or not I should grow courgettes next year and whether or not I'll ever get around to making jam with this years harvest (not until I get a new stool I won't). Do any of those topics interest you?

Re: Self-inflicted?

@James51

Exactly. It’s not about whether you lock the front door (Government surveillance) or the back door (Social media). You should lock both.

@Boris

I suppose the answer is “it depends”

I think I’d argue that it is pretty extreme to demand that immigrants conform to the local culture. I’d merely demand that if immigrants can’t accept the indigineous culture in a live and let live kind of way then they should go to another country where they’d be happier. Turning it on it’s head, if you decided to live in the UAE (perhaps following a very lucrative job offer), would you wear a thawb? Would your wife wear a burka? Would you eschew beer or pain killers in the privacy of your own home? Would you fast at Ramadan? No? And so why should immigrants to the UK do likewise?

As for democratic control of a country, I suppose that depends too. We have democratic control of our country now - plus a say in what happens in wider Europe. We’ll have very little, if any, more control after Brexit - and no say at all in wider Europe. But I’d argue that, locally, the decisions made in Brussels are equally as irrelevant as the laws made in London. My perfect solution would be tighter integration with Europe for non-local matters, and devolution of power (education, healthcare, planning) to the regions. Sadly, a lot of cock was spouted by the Brexiteer* factions regarding how undemocratic Europe is - and the right wing press and social media barfed it out to the public unedited and uncorrected. Many, sadly for us, believed it.

*And yes, I know that it’s traditional to wetly qualify that statement by saying that both sides talked cock - but I’m not the BBC and I don’t have to comply with some simple-minded half-arsed definition of fairness. The truth is that the Brexiteers lied their arses off - and the Remainers didn’t tell any sexy porkies to combat them.

Re: @ 45RPM

@codejunky

Absolutely. As a notorious woolly liberal fence sitter I agree unreservedly. A little of everything and everything in moderation. A sprinkle of capitalism here, a dash of socialism there - and everyone be excellent to one another. But, as I see it, it’s the far right that is causing trouble at the moment, whether in its guise of trumpism, faragism (and moggism and johnsonism), or putinism - or even in its Isis and al Quaida forms.

Many might dispute that Islamic fundamentalism can be conflated with the far right nationalism of the west but I’d argue that they are one and the same - “we’re the best and anyone who disagrees is damned (or a traitor)”

And once you go far enough right or left I suspect that you end up in the same place.

Supposing for a moment that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is a credible statement, we’d still need to add the coda “at the moment” to it.

With the rise of the far right, organisations which bear a good deal of resemblance to the extremists of Weimar Germany, and the clamour of those who would, if not actively support then at least happily accept them, and the pandering of mainstream political parties to these new extremists, I think that we should be very worried.

As the piece discusses (good job el Reg), people are concerned that they might end up on a list for doing something as innocent as protesting. And what is legal today might, to take an extreme example, be a hanging offence tomorrow (being Romany, disabled or Jewish to pluck an example from eighty years ago)

Benchmark smartphone drama: We wouldn't call it cheating, says Huawei, but look, everyone's at it

Re: VW

@eldakka

Hell yes. And make it relevant to people’s everyday lives too. The 100 metre coked up dash-and-grab with a 50” telly. For the cycling event it could be the pavement slalom with the winner being the first to nab 50 phones whilst amphetamined off their nuts. And the weed pizza discus, of course. An Olympics that people can relate to.

Re: VW

@fidodogbreath

I’m all in favour of a doped up sports league. Cyclists off their tits on performance enhancers, runners barely able to piss for drugs and so forth. See what that real limits of the human body are when chemically boosted.

The athletes would have to be warned and accepting of the risk, of course, and a non-doped league run in parallel - but i think that it would make for great entertainment. Certainly more exciting than who has the fastest phone, anyway - who the hell cares as long as it’s quick enough?

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

Re: Is their hardware history better or worse than their software history?

@anothercynic

Of course. What I said doesn’t preclude the possibility that some Thatcherite policies were worthwhile, and nor does it preclude the possibility that other businesses folded / were bought before her either. However, post Thatcher there was a demonstrable increase in the number of businesses failing / leaving British or European control.

That said, I would argue that some of her banking reforms were necessary, and that it was essential to weaken the unions somewhat (although it would have been an act of vandalism to destroy them utterly) - as with so many things, balance is required. A bit of Union, a bit of government, a bit of socialism, a bit of capitalism, a bit of left, a bit of right.

It was vandalism to permit so many British businesses go to the wall / be sold off, to reform finance to the point where greed became more desirable than solid investment.

Similarly, it’s an act of vandalism to leave the EU now - rejoining will not be so easy. Regaining the squandered trust may be impossible.

Re: Is their hardware history better or worse than their software history?

@AMBxx

You’ve muddled your cause and effect there. The decline in innovation can be ascribed to a short-termist, greed-is-good, attitude which came about, in part, through Thatcherism and imported Reaganism. The banks were supported through deregulation, resulting in the phenomenal rise of the City of London (supported also by being the main financial centre for Europe).

Sadly, part of the Thatcherist attitude also resulted in the mass sale of public business. In some cases this was good (the automotive industry), in other cases it was forced upon us (by the world bank, as a condition of further investment - we were once ‘the sick man of Europe’, how quickly we forget) and in others it was unnecessary, driven through sheer greed (public-private partnerships, railways &c.)

We had great, innovative British industry even after we joined the EU. Sinclair, Acorn, Apricot, Inmos, even Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Reliant and more besides. Thanks to the short termist view, and no protection from our government, they were starved of the funds to invest for the future and sold outside of the UK - worse, in many cases, sold out of Europe.

We still have one or two innovative businesses - they’re the ones that are privately owned. Imagine what they could do if they could raise funds on a healthy stock market, safe in the knowledge that they could rely on government protection.

Riiigghhtttt…

So, the latest happy happy nothing wrong here Tory plans are…

* Eradicating homelessness

* Investing more in Africa than any other country (in the wurrrllldd)

* Investing all the money that we pay to Europe in the NHS

* Building our own satellite navigation system

M’kay. So either the magic money tree really does exist, or our government is hiding away in its shelter, with the bombs raining down, and fantasising with its favourite architect how London will be built better than ever, and actually the bombs are a good thing because they’ll save on demolition effort.

I’m not saying that the governments wishes are bad - just that they’re unacheivable. We’re abandoning the greatest alliance in the history of the world, and fiddling whilst our economy collapses around our ears. And no, America will not ride to our rescue - Trump can’t be trusted, and sane American administrations value us principally as a bridge into Europe.

Do I hear two million dollars? Apple-1 fossil goes on the block, cassettes included

I love a bit of retro, me…

…and I think that the original Apples were an impressive technological achievement. But, for my money, I’d rather have a C64, Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Apple IIgs or c - or (best of all) the Retro PC 5150 kit.

For my money, retro computing (like classic cars) is about the fun that you can have, not the investment value. And an Apple I (or pre e II) isn’t much fun. And the Retro PC 5150, whilst a technologically weak bit of technology (even in 1981 terms) can’t be beat for fun. It’s like Lego. But with microchips.

Prenda lawyer pleads guilty to moneyshot honeypot scheme

These guys have got a bright future ahead of them…

…as Donald Trump’s lawyers. They display the same level of competence as each other and both have demonstrated the same moral values. Besides, at the rate Trump gets through staff, they’ll be the only option soon.

Who was it that hacked Apple? Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, boy boy boy!

So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong…

…rather than obsequiously courting my next prospective employer I should graffiti on HQ, and take a dump on their doorstep. Criminal acts win jobs.

Sadly, and speaking as someone whose job increasingly involves trying to prevent the exfiltration of data, hacks are a fact of life (utopian daydream - imagine what we could do if the world was honest, and we didn’t have to waste CPU cycles on encryption and lock down). Microsoft has been hacked, Sony has been hacked. Apple has been hacked. Everyone has been hacked at some point - and some don’t even realise it (because the hacker who hacked was serious, competent and not doing it for the lulz). The real measure of a business is how quickly they notice, how quickly they slam the door, and whether they prevent anything really valuable from walking out of the door.

Apple laughing all the way to the bank – with profits of $5.3m per hour

Surely the functionality of the Shuffle, for exercise at any rate - which was its primary use-case, has been subsumed into the Watch? If you’re into exercise, and you’ve bought into the Apple ecosystem, then you probably have a Watch - regardless that it’s an order of magnitude more costly than the old shuffle - and you’ll be using that to play your exercise tunes instead.

Re: Mac sales declined nine per cent over the quarter

Exactly. I don’t think it’s that no one wants the Mac anymore, but with nothing up to date in the low end (Mac Mini, MacBook Air) or the expandable high end (Mac Pro), everyone who wants to buy a Mac is either holding their breath or getting a Hackintosh.

I think that, once Apple extracts its opposable digit from its fundamental orifice and delivers new hardware, sales of the Mac will recover considerably.

Think tank calls for post-Brexit national ID cards: The kids have phones so what's the difference?

@Alien8n

Have an upvote Alien8n. You argue well, and you make a valid point - not one that I disagree with by the way. It’s a nuanced situation, and one that’s ripe for unhelpful snap judgments and flippancy.

That said, and at risk of spearing my earlier (tongue firmly in cheek) post, I must now admit that not all politicians are complete pillocks - on either side. But it is worrying to see the rise of the iconoclast, pandering to popular extremes and unable to respond to the subtleties of real-life. Everyone must now ‘take a position’, but sometimes sitting on the fence is the only intelligence place to be.

Ironic, isn’t it, that “Right” leaning is so often these days synonymous with “Wrong”.

* Selling off national assets

* Brexit

* Aligning with Trump

* ID Cards

* Magic back doors into encryption

and so on and so on. Mind you, “Left” leaning doesn’t seem to be so much better.

* Selling off national assets

* Brexit

* Antisemitism

* ID Cards

* Magic back doors into encryption

Politics. What a load of bollocks.

Samsung’s new phone-as-desktop is slick, fast and ready for splash-down ... somewhere

Re: Ridiculous

@Alister

;-D

Honestly? No. I like having a really good car, one that I can enjoy driving (as opposed to the sort of gadget that drives you around until it crashes - and then it crashes), and I’d like to have a really good aeroplane (but whilst I can afford the former, I can’t afford the latter).

Flying cars, or roadable aeroplanes, are compromised in either environment. Perhaps I’m unwise, but I’m also uncompromising.

Ridiculous

It isn’t innovative to try to invent one device that does everything. It’s stupid*. I wouldn’t want my car to double up as my bicycle or an aeroplane, and I wouldn’t want a bed which doubled up as a bath and a dining table. Sometimes it’s okay to have more than one thing, if your things perform different functions.

You know the old aphorism - Jack of all trades, Master of none.

* In the interests of total disclosure, I also thought that the iPod was stupid, that screens with resolutions greater than 640*480 were unnecessary, that the GUI itself was stupid, HD video unworkable and that tablets wouldn’t go anywhere. I might not be the best judge of what will succeed and what won’t in the computer of the future.

OK, so they sometimes push out insecure stuff, but software devs need our love and respect

Re: Top 10 far from the most common root causes of failure

This. All of it. Have an upvote.

Who fancies a six-core, 32GB RAM, 4TB NVME ... convertible tablet?

Re: That would make a very nice…

@Prof.

I’ve done my bit of development ninjing - including a spot of teaching the young ‘uns who come out of Uni unable to write a single line of assembly language. Not forced upon them you understand, they choose whether or not to listen to me waffling on about writing in a real low level language, or how to write object oriented code in C. I blame the universities, personally, for dumbing down their courses - the thirst for knowledge is there.

But what really gets my goat is piracy. The developers do deserve to be paid. The reverse of the coin, though, is that the users (especially the professionals, whether software engineer, mathematician, physicist, film maker etc) deserve hardware from the last few months - not hardware that is several generations out of date.

That would make a very nice…

…Hackintosh

I'm not a fan of Hackintoshes in general (I do believe that Apple's developers deserve to be paid for the hard work that they put into macOS) but if Apple isn't prepared to license macOS, or to produce hardware that gets updated as diligently as it does its iOS offerings, I don't really see what choice serious users have.

So now we can turn to HP / Dell for our MacBooks and Mac Pros, Intel for Mac Mini (with the NUC), and only turn to Apple for the all-in-one iMac (where the iMac Pro fills out the high end nicely, and where the cheaper machines will be good enough for those with deep pockets to pay for it, and who don't really care that their shiny new gewgaw isn't upgradable).

Me? I'm sticking with a 2010 vintage, heavily upgraded, Mac Pro. At least until something better comes along.

A fine vintage: Wine has run Microsoft Solitaire on Linux for 25 years

How? I didn’t think that Wine included emulation - and hence wouldn’t work on Raspberry Pi. I’d very much like to hear more about this.

Re: Killer App

Does the absence of MS Office matter as much as the absence of Visual Studio?

Older versions of Office, even older versions of ‘New’ office, with its ribbon and compressed .xxxX documents, work well.

But no full, modernish, version of Visual Studio works.

Then again, does it matter nowadays? We live in a *nix world now - the Lions share of the market belongs to Android, iOS, ChromeOS, macOS and Linux. Dare I say it but, other than for gaming and doing the accounts, poor old Windows is looking a bit…

…anachronistic.

Mellanox flushes three directors at behest of activist investor

Activist investors, like lawyers and accountants who run rather than serve the business, are a blight on innovation and productivity. A pox on them all. /rant

Linus Torvalds decides world isn’t ready for Linux 5.0

@AC - I remember, back in the day, Windows 3.0 running quite happily on 286 with 1MB RAM. Admittedly, there weren’t many big commercial applications that would run on such a setup - but Windows itself ran fine.

In a fit of masochism and experimentation, I even ran Windows 3 on a 4.77MHz 8086 Compaq Deskpro - with a mere 512KB RAM. I won’t say that it was a happy experience, you could watch every window getting constructed slowly, but it ran.

Re: Déjà vu

@Dazed and Confused

They did do that in the eighties. Sort of.

The numbering for MS-DOS is…

MS-DOS 1

MS-DOS 2

MS-DOS 4 (yes, really)

MS-DOS 3

MS-DOS 4 (what, again?)

MS-DOS 5 (and now numbering proceeds according to established principles)

The first MS-DOS 4 was supposedly multitasking, but it didn’t offer hardware memory protection (so that multitasking effectively meant more things could go wrong and be lost at once). It had serious compatibility problems, and it wasn’t well received.

MS-DOS 3 worked well enough (I used it until MS-DOS 6 came out), but MS-DOS 4 (take 2) was just MS-DOS 3 with a few new utilities chucked in and a boatload of bugs. In keeping with the MS-DOS 4 name, it was a flawed load of rubbish (but with the multitasking removed for the second shot at the MS-DOS 4 name).

Confused? You’re not the only one. Still, for all that, neither MS-DOS 4 was as catastrophically awful as the boat load of fail called System 7.5. Which just goes to show that no company is too big to screw up.