Posts by Mr Larrington

How to track equipped cars via exploitable e-ink platemaker

Re: { Curly Brackets }

ITYM Fortran. Albeit that a Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in *any* language.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

If they’re in it for the long term…

… then the obvious choice has to be Keith Richards, no?

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: Use Open Shell on Windows 10 (and I think 11)

This ^^^^.

Except — terrible Luddite that I am — mine most closely resembles XP.

Google, Oracle cloud servers wilt in UK heatwave, take down websites

Re: The times they are a changin’

This Unit went there in 2019 and got sunburned...

UK signs deal to share police biometric database with US border guards

Re: Just another reason to not visit the US for me then

Prices vary widely though. I'm going to San Francisco in early September for about £600. My ultimate destination being almost equidistant from SF and Las Vegas, I checked flights to the latter too. Over £1000 for the same day.

EU makes USB-C common charging port for most electronic devices

Re: The BS 546 Brexit connector next

“Of course you'll be familiar with the fact that British Standard BS7671 for earth wires are yellow/green striped since 1977”

Yes, but since the main purpose of Brexit is to take us back to a fantasy version of 1953 we won’t be doing with any of those new-fangled stripy wires which were only introduced in the first place by a desperate government trying to channel the zeitgeist of the Summer of Punk.

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Re: At the risk of being downvoted to hell

I'd upvote that ^^^^ twice if I could.

Google cancels bi-annual performance reviews, shifts to GRAD system

Re: hate them

Those at my last BigCo were crammed to the rafters with insane management-speak bollocks with frequent use of “leverage” as a verb and waffle about “customer-facing roles” which in our case we had not got. Hence The Boss refused to have anything to do with them. Either our systems worked or they didn’t. Then, alas, we were subjected to a Reorganisation and The Boss promptly handed in his notice. Though not before encouraging the rest of us to be as sarky as possible in our completion of the appraisal forms.

This, natch, did not sit well with the new The Mgt, who had us repeatedly flogged until morale improved.

Elon Musk won't join Twitter's board after all

So it would seem that when George Galloway threw a hissy fit the other day about being labelled “Russian State Affiliated” media by Twitter he was being a bit premature in appealing to Space Karen's better nature* to get the tag removed? Poor George!

* which in his case he has not got

Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Good luck with that, lads!

IME removing the unwanted antivirus package you just installed by not paying attention during the install of something you actually did want is only marginally easier than removing actual malware.

Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10

Five years, that’s all we've got

I wonder whether I'll have managed to install 20H2 on the big bugger upstairs by then*. “Page fault in non-paged area”.

* unless I bite the bullet and take the “nuke from orbit” approach.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

What is...

...this "Windows" key of which they speak?

Yes, yes, serves me right for using an IBM Model M older than most Microsith employees.

Tim Cook: The classic iPod HAD TO DIE, and this is WHY

Bah!

I was going to buy a 160 Gb Classic but decided to leave it until after my holibobs. When I returned to Blighty the gits had stopped making it and chancers were asking $SILLY_MONEY. My old and faithful 60 Gb is down to 2 Gb free.

I have a refurbished 160 Gb model now, hopefully this will last until the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation realises that 64 Gb is too frikkin' small.

Robot cars to hit Blighty in 2015

Re: I want a driverless car!

"And you could let it go and do other stuff during the day, instead of sitting at the station."

I await with interest the first occurrence of a driverless car being cited as the third party in divorce proceedings..

Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

Uptime

We're only on 91 days for our two VMS clusters, on account of a power failure.

Bah!

Sad news to one who's been a VMSherd since 1985.

LOHAN is GO! Reg spaceplane BLASTS OFF on 14 September

Bah!

I'll be on my holibobs in USAnia and so will probably forget all about it it :-(

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

Moreover...

25.806975801127880315188420605149 = the root of all evil.

Google Doodle honors British bone-finder Mary Leakey

Re: Honors?

Never mind the spelling, check out the apostrophe abuse. Pah!

Facebook burnout: 61% of users have needed a break

Stating the bleedin' obvious

Later on "Stating The Bleedin' Obvious", "water wet, fire hot", court is told.

LOHAN finally checks into REHAB

Hurrah!

Hurrah for Men in Sheds!

That is all.

Vatican subtly shifts its position on The Blues Brothers

That...

...would be an ecumenical matter.

Basic instinct: how we used to code

Jupiter Ace

In the mid-eighties I worked under a bloke who wrote his own BASIC *compiler* for the Jupiter Ace.

Scary.

Look back in Ascii: Computing in the 1980s

IBM Selectric Golfball typewriter?

What's not to like? I churned out masses of total bollocks on one of these as a Penniless Student Oaf in the mid-80's and it was streets ahead of my crappy Olivetti portable.

I used to work with a chap who used the predecessor of that Microwriter wossname for *everything*. It was spooky watching him in meetings taking notes with one hand, without even looking at the thing.

10x power boost for Freeview as London analogue signal cut

And now...

...perhaps I'll be able to watch HD without the signal disappearing every time a bus goes past Larrington Towers

Hold on, Booker prize judges - Stob's penned a steampunk hit

Excellent

That is all.

Thin-client giant Wyse gobbled by Dell

Re: Ah Wyse ...

I remember when our word processing ladies had their VT220 workalikes and wiring them into a VAX. Double shudder.

James Cameron back from dive to world's deepest point

Re: Shooting in 3D of absolutely nothing and collecting no samples.

Apparently you CAN go lower, as another bloke called Cameron has demonstrated recently...

Nepal asks for a leg-up to nail Everest's height

Re: GPS

Someone tried this a few years ago on K2 and came up with a result that made it higher than Everest. Then someone else had another go and found that K2 was, as had been long suspected, more than 800 feet lower than Chomolungma.

Bone-bothering boffins build GIANT penguin from fossils

Peng Yay!

ISTR an episode of Steve Bell's "If", in which Reg Kipling described five-foot tall extinct penguins as resembling "Francis Pym dressed as a nun".

Daniel Craig like Connery, Skyfall helmsman suggests

Meh!

Daniel Craig is so wooden he makes Keanu Reeves look like Laurence Olivier.

Kinect plus tablet control insane skateboard

OK, but...

...why on earth does it have knobbly tyres?

Opera's new store beams HTML5 apps into tellies

Hmmm

If it means buying a new tellybox then forget it. TV years are pretty much the same as dog years - my old CRT job died aged 16 about a year ago.

Foo Fighters gig goes seismic

Yay!

Rock and, moreover, roll!

Alec Baldwin kicked off plane for playing with his phone

Speaking...

...as the "plank" who was the last passenger to board BA 219 on September 3rd this year, it was entirely the fault of the useless twunt at the check-in counter who issued me with a boarding card that directed me to entirely the wrong gate in entirely the wrong part of LHR T5. *And* my phone was switched off.

System crash briefly grounds Qantas boarding passes

If it's any consolation...

...a couple of months ago BA's automagical check-in system decided, in mid-process, to decline to acknowledge my existence. I therefore went to the organic version, who duly issued me with a boarding pass. Gate B67 at LHR T5. When I got there, I found a big shiny Boeing 747 loading passengers bound for Los Angeles, which was a more than minor inconvenience for someone who wanted to fly to Denver. Fortunately a nice and, crucially, competent BA employee was able to direct me to the correct aeroplane.

I was the last to board. "We've been waiting for you" said a member of the cabin crew, disapprovingly. I showed him my fatally flawed boarding pass. He was apologetic. I was apoplectic, though not to the extent that I'd consider using a US airline for next year's holibobs.

Huge PDP-11 in a lorry: How I drove computers into schools

PDP - Aaargh!

In my first job as a Babbage-Engine driver we had a PDP which was used for word processing, and also by the accounts/payroll bods. Being a curious type who wished to be a 1337 h@xx0r, I discovered that the WP files could be accessed from the command line and were easily legible on a VT100 once you'd stripped away the initial gibberish. After only a couple of months in IT I knew the entire company's salary structure, which was galling as the only person paid less than me was the Wee Work Experience Lackey.

Twenty-six years later to the day and I'm still driving VMS boxes.

Reg man the most-flamed recruiter in the UK?

That's as maybe...

...but an e-chum recently got a job spec from a Slave Trader. The employer wanted someone with four years experience of developing apps for the Jobsian Fondleslab. Yes, please DO ask yourself how long said device has been available in the UK. Then ask yourself how clueless a Slave Trader would have to be not to pick up on this.

When my last job went to India I got a copy of "my" CV from the HR Droids. It bore absolutely no resemblance to the document I'd sent to the Slave Traders some seven years previously and, while it didn't say I was fluent in spoken and written Xhosa, the rest of it was so full of outright Lie that I am mildly surprised that I'm not doing porridge for fraud. And this was not the first time that a Slave Trader has re-written my CV to make me appear to have l33t 5k1llz in an area of which I know little. Witness the embarrassing time when some chump sent me to an interview with $BIGCO. I had understood it was for a VMS BOFH position, so all of us were a bit put out when it turned out that they were actually looking for a RSTS system manager.

Get you own bloody house in order, Sarah Connor, before you start bitching at the people who, when all is said and done, pay your fucking salary, er, commission.

Army to deploy jumping robots in Afghanistan

Nothing new under the sun

The BRITISH Army developed a "jumping Jeep" in the 1960s, until someone realised that it was a total WOMBAT and canned it. You may read about it in volume 3 of Doug Nye's epic history of BRM and Dog, if you're reading, where the f*** is volume 4?

Doctor Who and the Unsatisfactory Five Hole Tape Punch

Cloff!

"creations which are visually the product of the union of a commercial-size chest freezer and Metal Mickey."

Verity, dear heart, I require a new keyboard.

Mr Larrington

The Tower of Barad-Dûr

Harlow

We like zombies… because we are zombies

That George Romero, what a wag, eh?

Anyone bothered enough to write a paper about the image of the modern zombie should almost certainly be locked up for his own protection.

'A prime example of our complete failure'

Jobs got half an edition of R4's "Last Words" all to himself, while dmr didn't merit a mention at all.

Bah!

Gutsy golf-club granny collars crim in Flying Squad bust

I am speechless. Not one mention of The Sweeney?

Don't, Guv, 'e's not worth it.

Boffins prove Queen ballad 'world's most catchy song'

Woo!

I am only familiar with half of their so-called "top" ten. I do not know whether to laugh or top myself.

Ex-Microsofties' IE6 kill squad hits UK

Is there a browser out there that ISN'T completely shit? IE6 was teh suxx0r in many respects, IE8 has two speeds (dead slow and completely wedged) and FF6 is even more reluctant to wake up in the morning than I am.

Also the GUI for Win7 sucks donkey balls.

Scientists discover Tatooine-style world 200 lightyears off

Wot?

No womp rats?

God particle back in hiding

Re: And yet

@AC

Frankly I'm pleased the world wasn't sucked into an uncontrollable black hole. When they first switched on the LHC I was in the nearest equivalent of an uncontrollable black hole viz. Heathrow Terminal 5, and how embarrassing would it be to die while sitting on the floor[1] at T5.

1 - Because Lord bloody Rogers thought huge and no doubt architecturally significant areas of bugger-all were more aesthetically groovy than providing the weary traveller with somewhere to SIT DOWN. Grrrrrr!

Ridley Scott confirmed for Blade Runner pre/sequel

You decide

Out of order or BANG out of order?

Range Rover Evoque Si4

Mainstream motoring?

I'm obviously a skinflint, coz a car that can be specced up to the best part of forty-five grand doesn't sound very mainstream to me. also the involvement of Victoria Beckham should be enough to deter any right-minded person from buying this particular variety of wankpanzer.

Dob in suspect blingy neighbours on Facebook, say cops

As if

Go to a FWSE.

Enter ' site:facebook.com "nobody likes a grass"'

Get 'About 1,140 results'

I'm not sure the polis have really thought this one through.

MySpace vanishes $254m from News Corp coffers

How tragic

That is all.