Posts by WaveyDavey

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

Edlin

I recall using edlin to edit COBOL programs (on an NCR DM-V) prior to compiling with RM compiler. Happy days.

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

Free collective bargaining FTW. This article (and Sweden's union's activities) bring me joy.

Saturn's rings are shrinking and boffins will use the Webb 'scope to find out why

Measurements

Pleased to see the El Reg measurement system still holding strong.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

Re: It doesn't think you are dead now.

I asked it who you were, and got three ok paragraphs. I then asked it:

"in an article today on theregister.co.uk, alexander reports that you specifically reported his death, and linked to nonexistent obituaries online. "

It replied:

I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I am not capable of reporting or publishing information on any platform, including The Register. It's possible that there was some confusion or misinformation involved in this situation, but I can assure you that I did not report Alexander Hanff's death earlier, and I do not have the ability to link to obituaries or other websites.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please let me know and I will do my best to assist you.

Google's $100b bad day demo may be worth the price

Excellent

Just driving by to say that this is a really good opinion piece. Thanks.

China starts testing tech to harvest solar energy from orbiting panels

Beams

Didn't Charles Stross rename the power transmission beams from the satellites to the ground station? Orbiting Death Rays wasn't it ?

NASA’s getting really good at this flying a helicopter on Mars thing

Caption should be ...

Photograph taken from a Canberra

Burning down the house! Consumer champ Which? probes smart plugs to find a bunch of insecure fire-risk tat

I think El Reg should adopt the terminology used by Youtuber aVe (an amusingly potty mouthed, very smart canadian engineer). It is not "electricity", rather it is "angry pixies" what provide the scootch to the thingummy.

Tinfoil hat brigade switches brand allegiance to bog paper

The The

Lovely to hear a bit of The The - I still think Infected is a damned fine album.

ICANN finally reveals who’s behind purchase of .org: It’s ███████ and ██████ – you don't need to know any more

Bananas

Bent as a nine-bob note, the lot of them. Squirrelly little fucks.

UK culture sec hints at replacing TV licence fee, defends encryption ban proposals and her boss in Hacker House inquiry

Re: Hmm

You've obviously never used the pile-o-shite (TM) C4 on demand service then - skipping ads is an absolute no-no. Makes the catch-up watching experience pretty crap.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: People can feel insulted by anything if they want, it is their choice and it is their right

Forcing how? They fork the project - you are free to download it or not, or choose the upstream source.

This mention of snowflakes and SJW's sounds like forced outrage to me.

Re: Eh?

And was offensive even then. Just maybe, you know, don't call people names ? "Don't be a dick" is a pretty good rule to live by.

Meet the super-speedy white dwarf binary system that's going to grav-wave our world

Two bodies roughly the size of earth whizzing around each other every 6 and a bit minutes: those buggers are moving really fast. Anyone got a fag-packet estimate for speed (not velocity) ?

Take the bus... to get some new cables: Raspberry Pi 4s are a bit picky about USB-Cs

Re: USB-C

2,3,7 and 20 is all anyone should ever need.

Remember Windows Media Center? Well, the SDK is now on GitHub to be poked at your leisure

My Under-TV Box is a WMC, been running it for about 5 years now. I've tried a couple of times to try out Kodi and others, but getting it to recognise that the PC has a Hauppage Nova-T card has been nigh on impossible.

Given that the box is primarily for recording and timeshifting freeview, I cannot countenance anything that cannos *easily* be set up to use the DTV card.

Poor people should get slower internet speeds, American ISPs tell FCC

Re: Well, if they don't think it's fair...

@Kiwi, I'm a bloody awful christian, 90% agnostic, but I'll still be putting my name on the local night shelter roster this weekend, cos it's gonna get bloody cold, and rough sleeping when cold is awful.

Wakefield Baptist Church for the win: they actually *do* stuff.

Cyber-crooks think small biz is easy prey. Here's a simple checklist to avoid becoming an easy victim

I don't get it

Sure, the scams of fake invoicing, fake Data Protection registration etc are fairly old, as are payments to banks accounts that are not who they claim to be, but isn't the problem getting a fake bank account ? As far as I am aware, it is really difficult to get a "fake" bank account these days, thanks to crime prevention and anti- money-laundering measures. Can't the police simply track who owns the account money was paid to, then arrest the buggers ?

Shortages, price rises, recession: Tech industry preps for hard Brexit

Re: Ha Ha

But, but, but ...

I thought them terrrrrists couldn't cross water ! Or was that witches ? Can't rightly remember just now.

Re: And all we can do...

The fact that your comment has been massively downvoted is because you are talking shite. I am not part of an EU conspiracy, I am a dev in West Yorkshire who thinks you are talking utter bollocks.

El Reg needs you – to help build an automated beer-transporting robot

Nah, remember those pneumatic tubes, for firing money around the building ? Stick a bottle in that, and pfwoooosh !!

Astro-boffinry world rocked to its very core: Shock as Andromeda found to be not much bigger than Milky Way

From father Ted

This is small ...

Those are far away ...

D'you see, now, Dougal ?

Aaah, no.

Home taping revisited: A mic in each hand, pointing at speakers

Pixie Boots

I still rather miss them!. Was very embarassig the time I dropped a lit fag-end in the top of them in a crowded pub though.

It's artificial! It's intelligent! It's in my home! And it's gone bonkers!

Re: Dark Star...

Aways seemed to be aired around the same time as Silent Running

GoDaddy gives white supremacist site its marching orders after Charlottesville slur

There are rumblings

and strong suspicions that the site made up the Anon post to disguise the fact that 24h notice given by GoDaddy.

UK ministers to push anti-encryption laws after election

Yeah, and how's plod's manning / staffing levels holding up under Mrs WeakAndUnstable ? This happened on her watch.

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

Re: Unicornpiss @GATTACA

The moment you used the term SJW against people who think this is an awful idea, you defined yourself as an emapthy-lacking little shitstain. I do wish El Reg allowed blocking certain posters from view.

Google's troll-destroying AI can't cope with typos

Ugh

Those deliberate mis-spellings look like the toxic sludge that the #DMReporter keeps pointing out.

I want it hot and wet – preferably with Wi-Fi

Midge

Went to see Midge Ure and the India Electric Company last saturday week in Wakefield and it was bloody marvellous. Mr Ure has certainly kept his voice (compared to a number of 80's biggies, looking at you Mr LeBon, among many others).

Damned fine night out.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Using it here

Maintaining 2 systems, one VB.Net (with very pretty DevExpress UI), and a clunky php api. Stuff works, and they keep me too busy at the moment to learn how to migrate to C#. I'm interested to learn it, as I never really got on with the C family. I *get* handling pointers, but the old c way always felt uncomfortable to me. Maybe I'm just getting on a bit - I started with COBOL.

Migration plans to Intercal pending.

Gimme some skin: Boffins perfect 3D bioprinter that emits slabs of human flesh

Damned clever

and I would imagine it is going to be of serious use for burns and skin grafts. Bloody well done.

Oh, the things Vim could teach Silicon Valley's code slingers

Yuk

I've used some bloody awful editors over the years. Editing multi-thousand line COBOL files with Edlin was particularly unpleasant, but then so was the screen editor (hah!) on NCR centurion terminals. Editors in ITX and IMOS were also, erm, idiosyncratic. I learned vi in about 1986, and it's still with me, which is a very strong plus point - I can still just get stuff done with it. I recall how happy I was when I found a vi for DOS.

But then, editing source with Wordstar 4 was also interesting.

Go dark with the flow: Lavabit lives again

Groklaw

I wonder if this will allow groklaw to resurface ? Would be nice to see it again.

CIA: Russia hacked election. Trump: I don't believe it! FAKE NEWS!

Re: *IF* you choose to associate yourself with the label alt-right

Oh, I have been thinking a great deal about the dumpster-fire that the american election has turned out to be. At least I have the stones to put my name to my opinion, not like some anonymous drive-by dicksplash.

My sincerest hope is that the US doesn;t drag the rest of us down too badly as it careers madly towards becoming a third-world shithole.

Alt-right

*IF* you choose to associate yourself with the label alt-right, you are choosing, of your own volition, to associate yourself with racist shitbags, the KKK, the neo-nazis and white supremacists, and the frothing neo-fascists who love this label precisely because it avoids calling them the scumbag titles they would wish to avoid.

Thus you are tarred by association, and I for one, want nothing to do with you. By choosing that label, you have identified yourself to me as a member of the coalition who espouses everything I loathe.

I am generally a peaceful person, but any harm that comes your way pleases me deeply.

Microsoft ❤️ Linux? Microsoft ❤️ running its Windows' SQL Server software on Linux

Dropping SQL Server

Shurely shome mishtake - I'd be really surprised to see them dropping such a huge product - it's been there, and "enterpris-y" for years. Surely at the large scale end it's a licence for them to print money ?

Angry user demands three site visits to fix email address typos

Primary teachers

I know a few. They spend so much time with the dribbly end of the pupil cadre that their brains turn a little bit mushy. But they always have a spare tissue in their pocket, which can be handy.

Mythbuntu busted as last two devs working on media centre distro quit

Kodi Problems

I tried to set up Kodi a couple of times to replace my aing Win7 Media centre, but I stalled each time getting kodi to recognise and use a Hauppage DTV card - I gave up in despair/disgust in the end. All I wanted was a decent PVR.

Is this the worst Blockchain idea you've ever heard?

Re: Blockchain and HMRC

Oh, you evil bastard. Well played sir.

Virtual reality is actually made of smartphones

Hmm

I can accept the premise that a mass uptake of a touch enabled, flat screen device has caused massive economies of scale, and has enabled advances in the VR field, I take huge exception to the assertion that The Great Arsehole Jobs would have approved - I contend he would have *hated* it, as it didn't belong to apple, and was not contained in their repellent walled garden.

I want to remotely disable Londoners' cars, says Met's top cop

Hecalopter

What an absolutely marvellous word. I'm having that added to my lexicon right away. Many thanks.

FBI Director wants 'adult conversation' about backdooring encryption

Re: Disregard for consequences

There's be that many back doors it would look like a Menger Sponge !

Vale, LOGO creator Seymour Papert, who taught us that code can be creative play

Slight Criticism

Although I found much of the article salutary in what it shows the kids can do, I would have liked more on Mr Papert and his life and legacy - creating LOGO might only be a small part of his life's achievements.

Christians Against Poverty pleads for forgiveness over data breach

Re: good ole megachurches

These guys are definately not the "Prosperity Gospel" leeches, who I wouldn't piss upon if they were on fire. CAP id an organisation who's primary goal is to help people who have got themselves into a nasty mess of debt manage their finances and get out of debt. They are not perfect, some creditors do not like them at all, and are admittedly evangelical - if their assistance encourages a client to church they will be very happy bunnies indeed, but it is a side goal.

I *have* seen their help have a clear, direct and great affect on a peronal friend (who would still only be dragged into church for hatchings, matchings and dispatchings).

Disclaimer: I once went for a job there (in Bradford), and I know someone who works there.

Milk IN the teapot: Innovation or abomination?

Ahh, memories

I was about 9-10 and was in Tracy Bywater's house on Seymour Street, and her dad made tea - large aluminium teapot, boiling water, leaf tea, a digger-scoop of sugar and half a bottle of sterilised milk. Left to fester for 10 minutes, then drink.

I am now 50_ and I don't think my tastebuds have recovered yet.

Man sues YET AGAIN for chance to marry his computer

"Nothing surprises me any more"

I can just hear the resigned tone of the guy saying that.

Botnet-powered ballot stuffing suspected in 2nd referendum petition

Re: I blame the comedians

Museums: there's an exception to London-centric - the Royal Armories moved up to Leeds, and it's *bloody* good. I remember seeing Brian Sewell (obnoxious condescending twunt) apoplectic with indignat rage that it was goinf to "the provinces". Filthy commoners.

Lester Haines: RIP

Oh arse biscuits

Really shitty news. One of the few true classy Reg journo's. I think SPB and PostPub Neckfillers were truly superb, and I will miss them deeply - even if someone steps into Lester's shoes, they will be far too big.

This on top of my local MP 3 miles from my office. Worrying also that I am very very close to 55 myself - makes me consider my habits and choices.

My GNU Clacks line is now longer, Lester has joined PTerry. No-one at work knows, but *I* do.

Fly high, fly far, Lester.

David

EPO president caught threatening independent appeal board

What isn't clear

in the most recent articles about this nut-case, is who he is answerable to - surely *someone* is able to fire him, he's not a head of state.