Posts by Anonymous IV 818 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2011
> I only have vague memories of working on these types of machines from my time at Durham University, using both an System 360/65 and a System 370/168
In the early 1970s Durham University used to make use of Newcastle University's IBM 360/67 which ran Michigan terminal System (MTS) time sharing. The link between Newcastle University and Durham University was described as costing "a diplomat's ransom"! But presumably you are referring to a slightly later era?
A very similar account to this story was posted in November 2016.
I won't repeat my tale of the Amstrad PCW8512 diskette drives, similarly affected by direct sunlight...
> > Barclaycard had just laid off everyone in the IT department...
> > Someone had, at some point in time, left a floppy in the drive
> I suggest that these two statements are related.
You forget Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Quite some time ago there was a situation where a network group, part of <Huge Bank PLC>, based loosely in the southern half of the UK, were completely unaware of the existence of a second network group doing identical work, but loosely in the northern half of the UK.
(If you had worked in IT for <Huge Bank PLC> this information would have come as no surprise...)
When I read the headline I thought, "Oh goody! Andrew is going to do an article about the inimitable and irreplaceable (and irreplaced) Sarah Bee, former Moderatrix of this parish, and greatly missed." But sadly no, and even more sadly he, too, is going.
Royal Baby guff can never compete with these exponents of the keyboard.
If your PCs/laptops were powered on any time over the last three days (from 5 March onwards) it's highly likely that Chrome has already updated itself.
If you need to check a bunch of them, then use
dir "\\<pcname>\C$\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application" /ad
on each PC, and look for the folder named 72.0.3626.121
Or perform the equivalent in PowerShell!
It's another one of those opaquely-funded groups which try to change government policy at 55 Tufton Street.
That seems a very limited ambition. Do they intend to extend the scope of government policy changing to the rest of Tufton Street? The whole of the London Borough of Westminster? London itself? Further? I think we should be told...
Look up "Microsoft Truetype core fonts for the Web" (or variants thereof), and download them.
This will give you Andalé Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana and Webdings.
Bask in Microsoft's 2002 fontal generosity!
[You knew you wanted Comic Sans...]
> I remember as a puny undergrad having to use the hideous terminals Programming Simula/67 and Fortran
They were perfectly decent terminals - for the time. I'm surprised that you didn't program in Algol W and 360 Assembler rather than Fortran and Simula. But I suppose things were made easy for the undergrads of that time... <evil grin!>
"Several years ago" we installed PDP11/M micros in our offices in various towns in England. These were given three-letter names, usually the first three letters of the town name, like BRI for Brighton.
A new office was opened in Bristol, but the machine name was already taken.
The obvious three-letter name (containing two Ts) was vetoed by Management (boo, hiss), so it had to be called BST.
There is a story that Tony Benn once sent out advance copies of a speech to the news agencies, leading to several newspapers commenting on it. However, he gave a completely different speech to the audience! This enabled the arch prankster to rant on about the lying and corrupt press making out that he had said things which he didn't say. Only those virtuous reporters who had actually bothered to attend could have reported what he had really said!
At night as the staff left the building site one builder would bring out a wheelbarrow load of spoil. This went on every night for weeks...
It's a good enough story but doesn't hold water - after "every night for weeks" how many wheelbarrows would actually remain left on site? A negative number, I suspect...
Headline from their story on 10th May:
"You're the BT boss: how do you fix the company? Fire yourself or fire 13,000 colleagues?"
It took a month, but it happened! The article is well worth a read, even now.
You may well be remembering the story of a jobbing actor who was staying at a seaside boarding house, and (with the knowledge of the landlady) was enjoying the charms of her daughter on a nightly basis.
His bill at the end of the week included a substantial charge for "extra vegetables"...
(Can anyone identify this story more precisely, please?)
I presume that most MBA courses teach about the rise of companies and the reasons they rose, and the fall of companies, and the reasons they fell - some even ceasing to exist, others staggering on. A number spring to mind: General Motors, Ford, Blockbuster Video, Sun Microsystems, Wang Laboratories, Eastman Kodak, Yahoo, IBM - and most recently, Toys 'R' Us. I wonder what is currently being taught about Microsoft and Apple?
> Home Hub 5 owners are still waiting for the promised "Early 2017" update to enable IPv6...
And of course these owners are convinced that the IPv6 support will work perfectly the instant it is available!
Thank heaven that the BT HomeHub IPv4 support is so stable and complete, and could be used as a fall-back...
@Stephen Wilkinson
> Sadly I'm no longer a Member of the British Computer Society, I'm now a Member of the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT :(
And not a member of the considerably more prestigious Worshipful Company of Information Technologists? Perhaps you don't qualify for their membership, which "is open to IT leaders and practitioners, entrepreneurs, technologists in diverse fields, academics and those working in other areas with a strong IT or digital or technology connection such as management, finance, accountancy, law, health, HR, marketing and other disciplines!
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