Re: T1 - anyone?
New Zealand - at least where I live - 1Gb up/down for under NZ$100, no data limits at all.
Posts by SteveCarr
73 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Oct 2012
Unfixable Apple M1 chip bug enables cross-process chatter, breaking OS security model
Epic move: Judge says Apple can't revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks 'Where does the 30% come from?'
This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over
And it's off! NASA launches nuke-powered, laser-shooting, tank Perseverance to Mars to search for signs of life
IBM's sacking spree reaches Australia – and as staff wait to exit, they're offered AU$4k to find new workers
Wednesday 27th May 2020 04:59 GMT 
Pleased I no longer have to fear this b/s
It's a perverse pleasure of mine to read that nothing has changed since I left Big Blue - well, not exactly nothing, after all Ginni is a gone-burger too - but I do feel sorry for all my colleagues who continue to live in fear of their career terminating at the whim of an accountant in Armonk.
Remember the big IBM 360 mainframe rescue job? For now, Brexit has ballsed it up – big iron restorers
Enjoying that 25Mbps internet speed, America? Oh, it's just 6Mbps? And you're unhappy? Can't imagine why
Monday 22nd July 2019 00:21 GMT
Here on the fringes of the civilized world....
....in a cool but sunny winter's morning in Dunedin, New Zealand, I have FTTH, with a consistent and repeatable speed of 930Mbps down and up, no data cap and all for under NZ$ 89/month (that's around US$50 or so).
And dare I mention my 4G mobile plan, at NZ$80/month, again uncapped & with unlimited NZ and AU calling?
Plus they throw in free Netflix Premium & Spotify.
Das blinkenlights are back thanks to RPi revival of the PDP-11
Tuesday 22nd May 2018 07:47 GMT
Re: The PDP-11 lives on
Another extremely elegant machine was the PDP-10 aka DecSystem-10/DecSystem-20. With a 36 bit word length and variable byte size (six bit was most often used, but was by no means the only one), each instruction took up one word/36 bits. Every instruction consists of a 9-bit opcode, a 4-bit register code, and a 23-bit effective address field, which consists in turn of a 1-bit indirect bit, a 4-bit register code, and an 18-bit offset or alternatively an immediate value. Early machines used ferrite core memory, meaning they could be run at arbitrary clock speeds, down as low as one instruction cycle per second or so, all controlled by two knobs on the console. Great fun to watch the lights slowly cycle through as a program ran.
Monday 21st May 2018 09:43 GMT
Re: I cut my teeth on a PDP-11
Same here - my first was a PDP 11/05, that had been upgraded from 4KB to 8KB of core RAM. It had a high speed paper tape reader and high speed punch, as well as two, count 'em two, ASR-33 Teletype terminals.
It lived in the undergraduate room at the University where I studied in the mid to late 70's. You'd start up toggling in the paper tape bootstrap (14 sets of instructions from memory) and then read in the a tape to get it up and running properly - perhaps with the BASIC interpreter (multi user basic, what a buzz!). Writing assembler in the basic stream text editor, loading the (two pass) assembler, then link editing, loading a fresh tape at each step, and voila!
Ah, the memories!
No Falcon Way: NASA to stick with SLS, SpaceX more like space ex
Wish you could log into someone's Netgear box without a password? Summon a &genie=1
Dick move: Navy flyboy flings firmament phallus for flabbergasted folk
Developers' timezone fail woke half of New Zealand
Wednesday 4th October 2017 05:55 GMT 
Only the rubes on Voda got this
Us sensible folks on other providers slept the sleep of the righteous!
I do wonder if it would have overridden my "do not disturb" setting, come to that. I like my sleep, very much, so beeping, farting and otherwise annoying things are disabled from 10 pm to 7 am (that's New Zealand Daylight time, BTW, none of your silly GMT or UTC).
Shouty, because that's what Voda did - to OTHER people!
Boeing slams $2m on the desk, bellows: Now where's my jetpack?
Oracle staff report big layoffs across Solaris, SPARC teams
Nasty firmware update butchers Samsung smart TVs so bad, they have to be repaired
Thursday 24th August 2017 21:50 GMT
Try the land of the Long White Cloud
The only service center is almost 1000km from me, on another island. There is a local Samsung presence, in the middle of a local shopping mall, but that's it for the entire South Island and it'd be a seven plus hour drive from the further flung cities. Thankfully our Sammy TV is an older plasma model!
Oldest flying 747 finally grounded, 47 years after first flight
Web-enabled vibrator class action put to bed
It's August 2017 and your Android gear can be pwned by, oh look, just patch the things
So. 256GB. 3D NAND. MicroSD. SanDisk. $199. Any further questions?
Lack of Hurd mentality at Oracle OpenWorld: Co-CEO's cloud claims fall flat live on stage
'What this video game needs is actual footage of real gruesome deaths'
Wednesday 14th September 2016 20:00 GMT
Re: They forget one small detail...
As someone who lives in NZ, on a small rural block, I can attest to the wonders of "home kill" meat. So much tastier, and there's that warm glow you get from knowing Bessie went out blissfully unafraid, rather than in trembling fear of her impending doom in a Belsen-like abattoir.
Japan's Hitomi space 'scope bricked, declared lost after software bug
Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge
Google to snatch control of Android updates from mobe makers – analyst
Thursday 18th February 2016 23:32 GMT
Re: Don't get your hopes up
One way to get around this problem is to have an "early adopter" program, akin to the Windows X fast ring, where those, like me, who love to test the new and shiny releases of everything get notified of update code a week or three before general release. That way, the bad updates will only affect those who expect such things. Also, early adopters tend to be the ones who use for functionality, so even a smallish number of these makes for a great sniff test of a new release.
Capita hiring temps to cover for call centre redundancies – staff sources
Samsung appeals to Supreme Court to bring patent law into 21st century
Wednesday 16th December 2015 00:12 GMT 
The law is a Ass
The whole ridiculous US patent law charade is a great way to keep law graduates employed, while at the same time stifling competition and innovation. Surely this is not was intended, but clearly it is the outcome. And now, with trans-national corporates pushing ever more trade agreements based on said patent laws onto the rest of the world (TPPA for one), it can only get worse, not better.
The original Apple vs Samsung decision defies logic!
Science Museum trumpets Da Vinci expo
Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers
Friday 20th November 2015 01:52 GMT
Re: In NZ we are of course higher rate Apple Tax payers...
Time for the (rather toothless) NZ Commerce Commission to investigate - oh wait, we're a "free enterprise" state here, so no way will this happen!
Oh, and of course Apple make almost zero profit in New Zealand, pay almost no corporate tax, yet the prices we pay are way higher than other places, even though all the product ships from the same place. Maybe the IRD could take a look at that?
Perhaps middle-aged blokes SHOULDN'T try 34-hour-long road trips
Microsoft: Stop using Microsoft Silverlight. (Everyone else has)
Kaspersky Lab hits back at Bloomberg's Russian spy link hit piece
Friday 20th March 2015 01:35 GMT 
"You can trust US", says Uncle Sam - yeah, right!
State sponsored actor or not, Kaspersky Labs does a lot of very valuable work cutting cyber threats down to size. Now, it's pretty safe to assume that US based companies are likewise working hand in hand with the CIA, FBI, NSA or whatever. So how would it be different for Kaspersky? Plain and simple, it's probably not.
The difference that the US wants to point out is that they are the "good guys" and the Russians are the "bad guys". Yeah, right.....
Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!
Tesla bumps up Model S P85D acceleration – with software update
Saturday 31st January 2015 04:49 GMT
Re: I didn't have sound...
If you check out the description attached to the video on YouTube they claim this is not just on snow, but also on a 14% grade, in slick conditions. That's rather more impressive!
"Tesla Model S P85D Up a 14% grade in extremely slick conditions. Michelin XICE XI3 tires."
Rosetta probot drilling denied: Philae has its 'leg in the air'
Kryder's law craps out: Race to uber-cheap storage is voer
Monday 10th November 2014 19:50 GMT
Re: Service Life of HD
Point missed - after even 5 years, under the previous rate of storage capacity improvement, the drive was well and truly obsolete, in capacity and also likely in terms of throughput. With a slowing rate of capacity increase a drive won't hit that obsolescence wall as quickly, so might, just might, have a longer effective service life.
I've seen a lot of changes in my time in IT - the DEC RK05, IBM 3330 for instance - and there's no way you'd want to be running something like that any more. If I dig deep into my spares pile I'll find some low capacity IDE drives (the old MFM interface stuff went west a long, long time back, along with the SCSI-1 and SCSI-2's), but I recall fondly the 320MB full height 5.25" SCSI server drives I used to run in my old dialup BBS days. Enough current draw to make the lights dim when you powered the box up (not really, but compared to todays stuff, they sucked huge amounts of power for what now seems to be bugger all capacity).
Going forward, we'll want our 3/4/5/6TB drives to last longer. My current server box is running 2TB drives, and most of the drives have 4-5 years of spin time already, with no urgency to replace them any time soon.
ONE MILLION people already running Windows 10
Russia: SEXY LIZARDS which landed FROM SPACE are all DEAD
Tesla, Nissan, BMW mull all-for-plug, plug-for-all electrocar charger plan
Hello Moto... It's the Nokia Lumia 630
Monday 26th May 2014 06:24 GMT
Re: One word...
Or Slimbean - my old SII has trickled down to my wife, and SlimBean has vastly improved battery life and seen a considerable performance boost as well, over the stock Sammy bloated software. That, and it also runs JellyBean, and has enabled connection of Bluetooth 4.0 LE devices as well!
Recommendations for NAS-based home media set-up
Sunday 18th May 2014 20:04 GMT
Windows Home Server on an Acer Atom CPU here
My current setup -
Acer AH340 Microserver, WHS V1.1
1x1TB plus 3x2TB disks in the Acer
USB 3.0 PCI-E card in the one free slot
4 bay USB 3.0 enclosure with currently 3x2TB drives installed.
The WHS box also connects my weather station, serves as a test publish host for websites I develop, and runs the following media servers:-
SubSonic (for 250GB or so of audio files)
Serviio (for the 6TB or so of video media)
The above is limited by 2GB RAM limit, fixed CPU, and 2TB drive limit (able to be bypassed with a bit of hacking, but why should I)
Future Plans:-
HP Gen8 Microserver
WHS V2 or Windows Server 2013
DriveBender or similar to give WHS V1-like drive management
The Gen8 has 16GB RAM limit, replaceable CPU (up to Xeon CPU), dual GB Ethernet, built in USB 3.0, etc. I'll probably keep Serviio and SubSonic also.
Hot, young under-25s: Lonely slab strokers who shun TV
Friday 28th March 2014 18:07 GMT
Never ever watch live tv
I'm a very long way off being gen y being a boomer from 57. Yes we have a 51 inch plasma 3d screen but it plays from our media server with 5tb of movies and tv series as do our laptops and tablets. No adverts and watch only what we want when we want. Only idiots watch the idiot box as the advertisers want you to.
UK IT supplier placed on ASA naughty step over 'misleading' HDD ad
Kiwi inventor's court win rains on Apple's parade
Sinclair's FORGOTTEN Australia-only micro revealed!
Thursday 28th November 2013 08:27 GMT
Telecom New Zealand had them too...
The ICL OPD/One Per Desk. I had one as part of the beta test programme, as we had an ICL mainframe at work. Long lost to the landfill now. Telecom never actually released them to the NZ market, but I heard they had a shipping container full of 300 or more. Mine was the colour screen version - very spec!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
