Posts by aqk

It's 30 years ago: IBM's final battle with reality

Token-Ring? Ugh! Sorry, Madge! IRMA is here

Se my comments elsewhere here about the shitty token ring.

I thing THIS -Token Ring - is when IBM began to fall apart, in spite of all their FUD about Ethernet..

Re: Model M

Yep. Indeed, chappies! IBM made really good keyboards! And typewriters too!

I loved their sturdy 029 keypunch machines. The holes in those 80-column cards were crisp and clean! IBM sure made great stuff!

Their disks? Not so good as the competition. But when an IBM salesman took your boss on a 3 day junket, and you were then faced with maintaining your operating system(s) and data on a dozen or so shiny new 3340 disk-drives, well all I can offer is that it was a least some sort of guaranteed job security. But not necessarily for my boss.

TOKEN RING! It's WAAAY better than Ethernet!

And faster too! Ethernet only has a 10 mbs speed, but token ring will soon offer 16 mbs!

And our routers are something to behold! Listen carefully- you may actually hear the clicks of their relays switches!

Yes I remember the dorky IBM salesman trying to sell us this crap 30 years ago...

We laughed at it, and stayed with our ethernet.

Then 5 years later we were outsourced, and I suddenly, beside our own ethernet system, I had to maintain a horrible token-ring network used by a major international company (much larger than ours) whose IT dept had also been outsourced... Oh, the humanity!....

Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'

Rudy, I need more security!

I just tried browsing www.giulianisecurity.com

and it gave me

=====================================================

Your connection is not secure

The owner of giulianisecurity.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

Learn more…

Report errors like this to help Mozilla identify and block malicious sites

giulianisecurity.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.securesites.com, securesites.com The certificate expired on Friday, December 2, 2016 15:24. The current time is Friday, January 13, 2017 10:06. Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

==========================================================

This surely must be the fault of my Firefox!

If not, should I report Rudy to Mozilla? Or to Trump?

Emulating x86: Microsoft builds granny flat into Windows 10

How about EBCDIC?

Will my new Windows phone be able to run all those old COBOL payroll programs I have?

Oh- I may need a COBOL compiler too. Be aware.

Microsoft goes back to the drawing board – literally, with 28" tablet and hockey puck knob

"I WANT WINDOWS-7!"

Perhaps the latest Linux? . Or more likely, some (linux-based) fruity feline Mac flavour on an old Motorola,.

I can't be bothered looking at all the whiny comments here,

But I wonder how many of the techno-weenies below are saying that they might buy it, but only if they can retrofit their wonderful Win-7 (or perhaps XP) on it instead of this horrrible Win-10.

"Windows-10?? OVER MY DEAD BODY!"

Enjoy your win-7 (or perhaps Linux), guys! And don't get too many sticky little fingerprints on that big touch-screen! Unless of course, mum will wipe it clean for you every morning, and not ask any questions..

'Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone'

Now the thread is degenerating.

58008618

Re: @ DJO

Ahh.. are you coming it to PORT or leaving it?

Re: Easily fixed...port? uh.. oh yeah- left

It doesn't work like that.

I can easily figure out which is port or starboard etc, after a couple seconds through the use of conscious thought, but NOT when I'm driving a car at high speed and someone shouts "Turn LEFT NOW!"

I'd prefer they simultaneously point with their finger.

Re: Easily fixed...The "Right" Key not often used.

I have that problem all the time.

I have to emphasize "click the RIGHT button, not the left" usually used to bring up a context menu in Windows.

They'll often pause and ask "the right one?" as though they had just discovered it.

Of course, normally when you say "click the button", you imply the left one by default.

Luckily, the more advanced Macintosh users have no such problem! (ducks!)

"No, Mr. Scott! You talk into the mouse!"

This actually happened to me about 15 years ago.

My Pointy- Haired Boss (an elderly lady) asked me to replace an employee's dumb ASCII terminal with a shiny new PC and of course, a mouse.

Note that a fellow employee, sitting not more than 4 feet away from the dumb terminal user, had been using her PC AND MOUSE for at least 18 months.

Thus the TWO employees, side by would now have identical equipment. Got it?

Once the new PC was set up, the PHB decided to show the ex-ASCII lady how to log in and use her PC.

When she first picked up the mouse, the ex-ASCII lady waved it at the screen, and disdainfully muttered "So how does thing work anyhow?".

Remember now: her "cow-orker" sitting RIGHT NEXT TO HER had been using an identical PC and mouse for 18+ months!

So I (the only male in the group), - stupidly thinking she had seen the StarTrek movie and was joking, - laughed and replied "No, no, Scotty- you're supposed to talk into it!"

So she held it up to her mouth and seeming puzzled, asked "So what do I say?"

My PHB gave me (now horrified) a nasty look and hissed to me "I'LL handle this! Now go back to your office!"

Anyhow after another 18 months, I found premature retirement - without a golden handshake - and the company went bankrupt. I believe the CEO retired to the Florida Keys...

Falling PC tide strands Seagate's disk drive boats. Will WDC follow?

Re: Welcome to a foldable disk market!

That story about the dumb secretary folding the floppy is an old one. I heard it ~30 years ago.

So it was YOUR SECRETARY! I finally meet the legendary apocryphal IT man! But did your secretary ever try faxing the floppy disk to a customer? She must have! Unless that was another dumb blonde that I once knew back then... I believe she is in an old folks' home now, with most of these stories.

Anyhow the 3½" disks are indeed floppies, once you take them out of their stiff cartridges, as I have done many a time, if only to physically destroy them.

What's long, hard and full of seamen? The USS Harvey Milk

Coming soon! The USS Trent!

Actually, the USS Trent Reznor - replete with Nine-inch Nailguns!

Used mostly for flooring, but able to shoot seamen a very great distance!

What next? The USS http://factoids.ca/liberace ?? - Oh, wait! He was in the Marines!

Airbus to build plane that's even uglier than the A380

Re: Ugly, beautyful or purposeful.@James Hughes 1

You mean the Spruce Goose? Built by the guy that also designed Jane Russell's bra? This impressed him so much, he refused to cut his fingernails anymore!

Re: A minor matter of fish zoology

Have you no affection for the Super Guppy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy

Airbus got tired of their old Super Guppy?

So they are going to jump from a pregnant guppy to a beluga?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy

Re: Ugly, beautyful or fallacious

Queen of the sky?- the Concorde fallacy.

Re: XB-70

Let me correct that for you-

Very, very quickly...

Pull up the Windows 10 duvet and pretend Win8 and Vista were BAD DREAMS

Re: NOW 2016! from win8 to ubuntu gnome this weekend

It is now 18 months later.

So... did you switch? How was the experience? Please keep us informed!

Oh wait...! You're another anonymous coward. Sorry.

?? I don't understand!

I've been running Win 8.1 for some time on a multi-screen desktop, and much prefer it to my old Windows-7, whose PC is now sorta collecting dust- I only boot it occasionally to do Win-Updates.

I just installed Win-10 on (or over) my backup/test XP + Ubuntu dual-boot system and it runs even better! So I may upgrade the 8.1 system, or at least the old Win-7 system to 10 soon, once I kicked Win-10's tyres...

Now I gotta remember where I left my microphone so I can try Cortana....

Oh yeah- I also have Ubuntu on these systems- remember how installing Win-8 would clobber the GRUB?

Well, the Win-10 upgrade does not! After it was installed and a reboot done, GRUB was still there, and I can still dual boot!

Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push

Re: Updates off - Rock on

Fine. Let's discuss in 2 or 3 years.

Will you still be running Win7? Or will you, like all the boastful lads here, have migrated to some flavour of Linux?

I bet that 5 or 6 years ago you swore you'd never, NEVER upgrade from XP (Or was it Win2000?) to this horrible new Win-7.

Com'n now. Tell the truth!

I have records of all the laddies here that swore they WOULD NEVER upgrade to Win-7. Wanna see them?

Re: A final throw of the Minty dice before

Great! I personally use Ubuntu myself.

As well as Win-10 (both standard and the "fast" insider preview).

But at the present, I would NEVER install Linux - either Ubuntu or Mint on my Aunt Lucy's PC. Her old desktop could just not take the excitement of those interminable problem fixes via a list of arcane and lengthy commands.

YOU love Linux and so do your 3 or 4 geeky friends. And so do I.

But about your mom and pop? Or your uncle Ebenezer?

Do you plan to upgrade their XP (or is it finally Win7?) with your all-powerful sweetheart version of Linux?

Ah, as a retired techie, how I miss those 3AM phone calls!

Now, you too can expect them too!

Good luck.

Re: A final throw of the M$ dice before?

Wow! M$ ! I haven't seen this cute little acronym since about 1994, when our company got rid of the last of our Macintosh weenies!

Golly, Dude - do you still refer to Bill Gates as the Antichrist? I bet you even have a ponytail!

You can be my wingman any time! RaspBerry Pi AI waxes Air Force top gun's tail in dogfights

Nerd questions! (finally!)

So was this a Pi-II or a Pi-III ?

And was it running Raspbian or (gulp) that new Windows-10 thingamajig?

Database admin banned from Oxford Street for upskirt filming

Re: Am I the onky peson who...

I would certainly hope so.

I googled you and came up with a few peculiar South Asian websites, but no actual "onky peson".

BTW- Do you have trouble meeting women?

Re: to the UK to install Oracle databases at hotels and restaurants.

Hotels? He should have gone with MOTELS. Read my link above... or perhaps below, depending on your rectitude.

Re: No oracle Oh, BEHAVE!

But then, isn't that just what it's all about?

An Oracle DBA? It figures!

Why it might well have been the great yachtsman Larry hisself! But more likely this poor slob is a paid Oracle lackey, sent to do his cruel master's bidding.

Still, if you like this kinky stuff, then the MOTELMAN, as described in the following New Yorker article: THE DIRTY MOTELMAN! - by Gay Talese, has to have had the best setup. He actually bought a whole motel for his skirting of the law!

FBI boss: We paid at least $1.2m to crack the San Bernardino iPhone

iPhone, schmiPhone. A .50 cal is all he needs.

Or more appropriately, an M16.

OK, - no phone number... unless he has posted one at http://www.bealibertarian.com/

This should really help his November candidacy.

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

And where is the Hydrogen response?

Ironically, right beside this article is a leader for a "hydrogen powered car".

Will this hydrogen idiocy ever die? Or have they recently drilled a hydrogen well?

Microsoft on Cloud 9 after online biz boosts profits to $6.3bn in second quarter

Re: I'm amazed by the minute suckers borne

Yes, but some of us are just borne too loose.

Windows for Warships? Not on our new aircraft carriers, says MoD

Re: Pedant alert But seriously, folks Vista was good EVENTUALLY

It's fun to knock Vista- it was such a dog when it was first issued.

Perhaps the only Win-OS that was worse in the last 15 years was Millennium. And it was only 16-bit.

I know several folks that bought a laptop with Vista on it. And struggled and swore. But eventually MS got it to a level (SP2?) comparable to Win-7. Once I installed this on their laptops, the inevitable question was "Should I upgrade to Win-7?"

Nah. Stay with Vista - it's as fast - and more reliable.

But then, THEREGISTER is full of these complaining dopes/dinosaurs. "I WILL NEVER UPGRADE TO WINDOWS-10!" Or 8 or 7 or XP, etc.

... (Sent from my old 4GB desktop, currently running Win-10 Build 11082) ....

Re: Pedant alert

And are these Win-10 tubs issued using the Fast build or the Slow Build?

Re: Ah! A most ROBUST wallpaper!

You may call it a BSOD, but in Redmond, it is referred to as an extremely robust wallpaper.

Windows 10: Major update on the Threshold as build 10586 hits Insiders

Re: zzzzzz<rant>zzzzzzzzzz

Please! Don't encourage him. Just let him rant.

Mainframe big boy Big Blue tries to drum up new biz via Linux

Didn't IBM port Linux to the mainframe years ago?

Think it will use ASCII or EBCDIC?

Fifteen+ years ago I remember them advertising Linux as an optional OS on their Z series VM system

But of course this is when an IBM sales rep gave me a "real cool groovy" IBM t-shirt that said "@me", which I still treasure, even though I don't understand what it means...

Back then, IBM was jumping on any trendy bandwagon - PS2 and "WARP" come to mind - maybe they still are.

Now, where did put my green card...?

Re: But does it have...

LOL! That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this headline! Maybe a BAL translater/ interpreter too?

Mega fatcat Kim Dotcom in deportation drama over SPEEDING ticket

What about my Mega-Gigacloud data?

Does this mean I should recall my 35-40 Gig of data stored at Mega, before it all goes "phhhht!" and the RIAA then ask me for the password?

"We'll be glad to recover your data! Just give us the passwords!"

You'll NEVER guess who has bought I Taught Taylor Swift How To Give Head dot-com

And he blows Bob Parsons too

What's worse, that Goo-Daddy Elephant slaughterer is his domain reseller!

Tough Banana Pi: a Raspberry Pi for colour-blind diehards

Hey- add a DDR3 memory slot and maybe a PCIe-3 slot and it will be one helluva motherb...uh, I mean a computer!

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

Re: Yaaaaawn

Oh, stoppit!

Sadly, you must have been borne too loose.

Re: Yaaaaawn? There IS a SLIDESHOW on Win 8

I have both Win 8 and Win 8.1.

The photos slideshow runs very well on it. In fact I have a two-monitor desktop on my 8.0, and the slideshow rotates differnt pictures for each monitor (but all part of the same slideshow).

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

Re: Then we're fucked

Methane! Yes!

Let's put the Earth in orbit around Saturn! Think of all the free methane we can cadge from Titan!

Re: three "disasters" so far - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima

Yes- but won't somebody think of the <sarcasm> thousands of children that died at Three-Mile Island? </sarcasm>

Re: And thorium cycle nuclear power is EVIL!

Thw world is being run by LADIES. And with their lack of scientific knowledge, they deem anything that is "nuclear" must be EVIL!

Say hello to the dark ages again.

I'M SO SORRY, sobs Rosetta Brit boffin in 'sexist' sexy shirt storm

May I have the shirt?

I do not wish to sound shirt-faced, but if the good rocket scientist is finished with the shirt, might he send it to me?

Farewell Nokia: First ever 'Microsoft Lumia' set for Tuesday reveal

Oh, my!

So few Apple fanbois here. Are you all dying** out?

** Perhaps I should have said "drying out".

A Terabyte in my HOUSE? Got more than that in my POCKET

MY OWN PERSONAL CLOUD!

Just what I need. Until the battery dies.

I suppose this could be plugged into the wall, via a 5V USB brick?

US regulators OK sale of IBM's x86 server biz to Lenovo

Now, IBM can finally perfect its hi-tech stuff

Token-Ring! Much faster than Ethernet!

OS/2! It beats Windows hands down!

The PS2 bus! Get rid of your old motherboard design!

The 2321 Data-cell drive! Holds way more than a disk drive! Can you say "noodle-picker"? Hmm.. Perhaps Lenovo will demand this one be included in the sale...