Posts by CP/M-80

What's wrong with the Daily Mail Group buying Yahoo?

Re: Woe, woe and thrice woe!

Have an up-vote for the Up Pompeii! reference.

Why was the modem down? Let us count the ways. And phone lines

I'm actually thinking of buying a modem. We have appalling broadband at home - it struggles to stream 64kbps internet radio at weekends and about once a month drops out for a few hours. Our new router/firewall has a modem fallover port. Do those 0845 1p per minute dial-up services still exist?

TalkTalk website STILL down on day TWO

+1 for your splaffer

Laid-off IT workers: You want free on-demand service for what now?

Re: "I've forgotten how to do that"

Been there, done that. After my plum project was moved to a golf-playing buddy of the manager, and I grumbled and he said (on Monday) "if you don't like it, there are plenty of jobs out there". Thursday I put in my notice having got one of said jobs. That was sweet. But we had a 2-year release cycle (imagine that!) and we'd just done one so he was thoroughly unpleasant through my notice period. A month after I left they found so many errors in the data that the software was processing he had to 'phone me up to ask me to contract to help them out. "Sorry, I've forgotten it all already".

Bosch, you suck! Dyson says VW pal cheated in vacuum cleaner tests

Re: "Brit vacuum-cleaner maker Dyson"

+1 for mentioning Numatic. I have a Henry in the house, and a 110v Charles for site use. They are excellent.

All in all, it's just another hit in the stalls: Roger Waters The Wall

I thought the film was rather good. I saw the live show in London in 2010 and 2013 (ish) so was keen to see this. The film was a little self-indulgent, but then it was always going to be, being Roger Waters. But it stuck very closely to the stage show and the inserted "road trip" segments did give more insight into his character and work. Thanks to El Reg for mentioning it otherwise I'd have missed the 'one night only'.

'Self-deleting' Mexican ATM malware let sneaky miscreants slurp cash

Interesting. The malware authors must have a pretty good knowledge of the operating system, hardware, and they have access to the machines- presumably without drilling the case to access a USB socket. It seems like this needs someone with inside knowledge?

Whilst stealing money is of course very wrong, I was impressed by idea of displaying a QR code, that's neat.

BOFH: Press 1. Press 2. Press whatever you damn well LIKE

Re: It all comes down to this...

"except the Hitchhiker's Guide, sadly"

I had a Hitchhiker's game on PC/DOS in the early 1990s. It started something like...

"You wake up in bed. There is an analgesic on the table near you."

I never finished it. :(

Re: Mainframe version

MUD? Banned at our Uni yet still installed and available. Like they were testing us or something.

Confession: I was a teenage computer virus writer

No interrupts on Apple ][ ?

It's too long ago to remember, but I'm sure there were interrupts on the Apple ][ - maybe not in Apple Basic, but I'm sure there were interrupt vectors.

An excellent article reminding me of the late 1980's. I wrote a TSR which displayed the time in the top right corner just as an exercise in programming - it was a common utility then and there was no reason to write it myself other than learning.

Probably the nearest we got to a 'virus' was a friend at Uni's programme which (unintentionally) didn't play nice with the Encore Multimax and somehow the processor wasn't freed up after running. After he'd run it 12 times all processors were blocked and the mainframe went down. So he logged onto the second one and the same happened. Somehow the operators thought it was his fault and he got some serious flack for it.

No, Microsoft: Your one-billion Windows 10 goal is just sad ... really sad

Dodgy Demographics graph

The graph on page 2 is a little misleading. The percentages are mapped onto the length of arc, but the the arc is then swept through 60 degrees - making the desktop usage appear much lower than it is. e.g. for Canada, age 35-54 the 36% orange smartphone band appears (to me at least) larger than the 47% blue desktop band.

Skills crisis? Not for long: More and more UK kids gain STEM quals

Re: We want today's kids to be stupid and cocky...

Q. WTF is a STEM ambassador?

A. Someone who volunteers their time to help promote STEM subjects in schools, etc. in addition to their regular job.

Fixed that for you.

Exploding Power Bars: EE couldn't even get the CE safety mark right

Re: ISO

Using void* across the project would meet that criteria ;-)

New study into lack of women in Tech: It's not the men's fault

Well, if we are going to be pedantic (and a little pedantry on a Monday morning is no bad thing) ... I understand the original 1950s definitions were something like:

First World - America and her allies post WW2, generally capitalist

Second World - Russian and her allies post WW2, generally communist/socialist

Third World - the rest of the world - South America, Asia, Africa.

Though obviously the term has changed in use over the years and I guess many people who refer to the "third world" couldn't actually say what the "second world" is.

Download Fest goers were human guinea pigs in spy tech experiment, admit police

Re: so the police view seems to be

The Police are more about "order" than "law" these days it seems. Keep the population under control, rather than apply the law fairly an evenly.

Apple Watch is such a flop it's the world's top-selling wearable

Re: Who actually wears a watch anymore? And why?

I find it much quicker to look at my watch (Casio G-Shock), it has multi time zones for travelling but best of all, my boss can't 'phone me on it!