Posts by Ghostman

Man who binned 7,500 Bitcoin drive now wants to buy entire landfill to dig it up

As far as the hard drives working after being in the dump, there shouldn't be a problem as long as the platters haven't been damaged. 1994 we had a flood in our area and the computer lab of a local high school was under water and almost everything was washed away, including all the computers. In 2000 I was handed several of the computers when new bridge construction over the creek was begun to replace the bridge supports and they were found in the mud banks under the bridge. Took the humps of hardened clay and hosed them off until I could get to the case screws. When i removed the case, a perfect clay model of the case was revealed. Again, hosed off the inside. Tore down the chassis (IBM PS/2) and soaked the motherboard in a tub of water and dish soap, scrubbing with a soft toothbrush. Note: red clay is full of iron and would cause some spectacular sparks if not thoroughly clean. Cleaned inside the case, switches, floppy drives (2), made sure the monitor wasn't cracked, got everything clean and shiny.

Put it back together, plugged it in, and the C_ icon appeared. Told the crew chief to call me if any more showed up.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: But given some people's 'every other Windows version is good' theory

I'd Venture 98 wasn't so bad by SE.

Actually, Win 98 was really bad if you had Win 95 installed at all. Nothing worked. No printers, no scanners, most drivers for almost any hardware until 98 SE.

Of course there will be those who either don't remember, or those who wrote their own drivers.

FBI wipes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of Windows PCs in America

Snopes about the rumors

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/words-of-mass-destruction/

CISA: Wow, that election had a lot of foreign trolling. Trump's Homeland Sec pick: And that's none of your concern

The dems were trying hard at posting disinformation and just outright lies

I have a relative that, heaven help him, is a devout, rabid, democrat. I got onto him repeatedly during the campaign about not fact checking the memes and articles that he was posting as being "not truthful, not correct, and downright lies". Yep, that's the quote I would use. Told him many times that a 30 second Google search would have saved him a lot of embarrassment and loss of credibility. After posting links to show that the article or meme was "not truthful, not correct, or just a downright lie" he removed hid FB post, for a little while, then re-posted it, where I re-posted my response. He got thrown into FB jail several times. He has since de-friended me for some reason

We’re paying for what we don’t get: East D.C. neighbors frustrated with Amazon’s Prime delivery exclusions

Re: Back to western movies

They just need to have someone riding shotgun, or maybe semi-auto rifle, in the delivery trucks alongside the driver.

fixed that for you.

Arecibo telescope might have failed because of weak sockets

Re: Failure in 3,2,1...

And then there's the new president asshole elect ... (fixed the spelling for you)

He is so fond of Puerto Rico.

You do remember that Trump had over 5 million more votes than Harris, won more than twice as many states, and 86 more electoral votes than Harris.

One good indicator of how voters did not want her as president was that Trump took the early lead and Harris never came close.

NASA fires up super-quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft

Re: Why would that pose difficulties for a passenger jet?

About 2014 I bought a ride on a WWII B-17 bomber. I could only afford a place behind the bomb-bay. Rich guys were buying seats in the NOSE (see Wikipedia 'B17'). Yes, it is all-view (clear bubble nose).

May 22, 2022, I rode as bombardier and my son was in the navigator seat of the Texas Raiders B-17G. Several months later the plane was cut in half by a fighter that missed a cue and turned into the bomber at a very low altitude.

FCC fines be damned, ESPN misuses emergency alert tones yet again

Re: Interesting how every other country manages without this tone thing

I'm not denying that what ESPN are doing is incredibly annoying (as is all TV advertising imo), but if the US is relying on a specific sound to grab people's attention in the event of an emergency, I feel like they've already failed. Every other country seems to manage without this system... maybe the whole thing needs a rethink.

Mainly because we have come accustomed to the fact that when we hear that tone, there is some type of important information about to be broadcast. The tone was used when Kennedy was shot, when the Twin Towers were struck, at every life changing episode in our lives since the Cold War. My generation, when we heard that signal, were ready to grab hold of loved ones and say goodbye since we just knew the Russians had launched their nuclear arsenal at us.

The tone has alerted us to tornadoes, flash floods, blizzards, and wild fires. It serves a purpose.

It's been a multi-generational part of our lives.

The signal comes over all cell phones, tv, radio, satellite audio services, and I wouldn't doubt that it's in the works to come over any Bluetooth device set up for audio (kinda scary if your printer starts talking to you.).

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: "amid growing adoption of competing architectures"

We also have a 128-bits wide operating system READY TO GO that has all the major apps needed to run a small, medium and large business that works on these Super-Chips but if you want you can STILL RUN all versions of DOS, Unix, Windows (Win 3.1 to Win-95 to Win-98 to Win-2000 to XP - Win7/8/10/11 and all Servers from WinServer-3 to WinServ 2000 to Server 2022) plus Linux and Android within MULTIPLE 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit Securely Partitioned Sandboxes and run them ALL AT THE SAME TIME on a single super-chip to such an extent that you can run a NESTED Windows or Linux Hypervisor AND ALL of its client server OS'es and end-user OS'es WITHIN a separate sand-box!

But, can it play Crystalis?

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

My guess is they hadn't been trained on Presidential motorcades, so didn't know how to deal with them.

They had probably heard her speaking her "word salad" remarks and wanted to teach her how to make sensible replies to questions.

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

In answer to Musks bad joke, because Biden/Harris are not racist POS and are actually trying to govern for the benefit of the American people.

Challenge here: Show me where he has done anything racist. You should be afraid of a man who claims he's smarter than everyone, says he was top of his class. Afraid of a political figure that knew her boss was on the declining edge of health/sanity, but chose to hide it from the voters. Still makes claims about the border, but says she will fix the problems we face-even though her administration caused them.

Think on that for a while.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

I remember power supplies with those switches placed to be accessible at the back of the machine, but with the toggle recessed a bit so accidental contact wouldn't move it.

I had a customer that brought in his computer saying it stopped working, his 14 year old tech help had told him the power supply was out (which he was correct about). He bought a new power supply, installed it, and it wouldn't turn on. He flipped the TOGGLE POWER SWITCH, and it still didn't power up.

Brought it to my shop, told me what happened, checked the power supply and yes, it was working.

Told him no problem, I'll have it working in just a second. Unplugged the power supply, put right hand on top, left hand on the power supply in the back, and di my best impersonation of a faith healer and loudly said "HEAL".

Plugged in the power supply, turned on the computer, and it came right up, well, as fast as an older Pentium would boot up.

The guy was dumbfounded, claimed I was a magician, and would send me all the business I could handle.

Told him no problem, just a typical day at work.

He asked what I had done to get it to work.

Told him that the switch needed to be set for 110, not 240. He asked what switch, I then showed him the RECESSED SLIDE SWITCH that changed the voltage.

I still get customers that tell me he sent them because I can do magic with computers.

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: Handgun?

The issue isn't 3d printing a gun. It's 3d printing a very small restriction piece that turns the semi-auto back into an auto.

I don't think you grasp the supreme measure of just how wrong your statement is. A semi-auto firearm is one pull of the trigger, one shot. A semi-auto is never a converted full auto. You do not convert it back to a full auto firearm since it never was one.

There are many reasons why handguns are not full auto. The biggest is the one mentioned before. It's hard to keep a full auto rifle on target (Yes, I've fired full auto rifles in the military.) It is way much harder to keep small sub-machine guns on target like the Mac-10 and Uzi. The muzzle tends to go up very quickly unless you keep a hard downward pull on the forearm and the stock against your shoulder in the "pouch".

Secondly is heat. Full auto is constant firing. Emptying a full magazine heats up the receiver, bolt, and barrel to the point of almost not being able to hold it. Also could cause the spontaneous "cooking off" of rounds.

In the military you learn to fire no more than 6 rounds at a time. You learn to mentally say fire round of six, pause, fire round of six, pause. Then it's easier to control the up-sweep and not let the firearm heat up on you.

My experience with full auto firearms include the M-16, the M-4, the Thompson, the M-60, and even Madsens.

I'm ashamed of the Register for using

Intel's legal troubles mount after plunging stock sparks yet another court battle

Now you know why I try my best to only build computers with AMD chips. Intel has never had the hook in me. When someone wants me to do an Intel build, I try very hard to talk them out of it. lately with the problematic chips it hasn't been hard. Also I show them my two personal computers with AMD chips more than 10 years old that will do most of what they want to do.

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

Re: "You are confusing Belgian chocolate with American "chocolate""

That "slight taste of vomit" comes from the milk Hershey's uses. Even though it comes from their own dairy, the milk has to be "soured" to get what Hershey called the "proper taste".

If you get Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, the peanut butter covers the taste in the chocolate.

Ex-White House election threat hunter weighs in on what to expect in November

Re: Othering

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now tell me why people needed to stand in a queue for eight hours. And since you bring up voting machine security, where's your evidence that there were problems capable of swinging the election?

OK, how about Gwinnette County, Ga. Candidate running for office casts her vote alongside her family. That night 100% of districts are in. She lost, with 0 votes in her precinct. Only 4 precincts had votes for her. Demanded a recount and audit. She ended up with more than 5000 votes after the recount and audit. She got 43% of the primary vote, she had more votes than anyone else, and would be in the runoff. The democrat led election board blamed it on computer error.

That same primary, Ga Secretary of State announced that so far 1000 voters cast votes TWICE. Don't have the figures of the final count, but I imagine it was a not insubstantial number.

Abrams and Warnocks group New Georgia project, was found to be sending Georgia voter registration forms to people living out of state, including New York. They were also found to be forging forms for voters. It was claimed in one county that some of their registrars were seen going through cemeteries writing down names. The solution given by the New Georgia Project? We'll fire those that did this and hire new ones and do a better job in training.

A different group, America Votes, were registering people for absentee ballots that moved from the address the group registered them in for as many as 8 years. Some had moved across country.

People stand in a que because they somehow got to the polling location when a large number of others had come to vote. I've been in one for early voting on a Saturday and spent hours in line.

Re: Othering

Ex-White House election threat hunter weighs in on what to expect in November

5 days

Rich 11

Silver badge

Reply Icon

Re: Othering

now that the hard core supporters on the right think manipulating democracy is justified

They've been doing that for decades. Gerrymandering and voter suppression is rife, right down to those vicious laws in some of the southern states that no-one can provide water to anyone standing in line to vote. Of course someone's going to say that it's purely coincidence that voting stations have been closed primarily in African-American areas, so that people have to face queuing at the remaining ones for up to eight hours.

And when that doesn't work, the right lie about election integrity, and when that doesn't work, the orange shitgibbon incites a riot at the Capitol.

Lot of short memories on the right. Or just more lies.

Oh wow! Another person making claims about the new voting laws, but again, failed to read the paperwork. So many reactions about that from folks that should know how to read and comprehend what they are reading.

My grandma don't got an ID, how she supposed to vote? Does your sainted grandmother have a Social Security Card? That's an approved ID for voting.

People passing out needing water in line, and the law say they can't have water. Nope, groups can pass out water, can even sell it. Just can't campaign or have be campaign materials. (I'd love to have a coffee/hot chocolate stand next to a line in November)

Don't have an ID, water bill, electric bill, rent stub, nothing to show who you are? You can still vote-just have to bring one of the items in for verification within 48 hours so your ballot can be counted.

They voted away the drop off ballot boxes. Not really. The ballot drop offs were an expedient during COVID, and, there is still at least one drop off box in each county. They are just where they can be

monitored.

Brilliant idiots who kneejerked about the law included the Commissioner of Baseball who decided that Atlanta didn't need the All Star Game because of the new law that he never read. Several CEOs got together and tried to get national boycotts on Georgia products. One was the CEO of Coca-Cola. Guess he forgot that Coke has it's international headquarters in Atlanta. Several others from GA got fired due to cutbacks from lost sales.

So, before you start accusing, read what's going on rather than depend on your controller for your propaganda.

IBM sued again for alleged discrimination – this time against White males

Re: Sets race-relations back sixty years

Reply to post: Re: Sets race-relations back sixty years

IBM sued again for alleged discrimination – this time against White males

2 days

aerogems

Silver badge

Reply Icon

Re: Sets race-relations back sixty years

Welcome, visitor from another reality. Try not to make this one like the shithole you came from. kthxbye.

What? did someone chime in from California?

IBM sued again for alleged discrimination – this time against White males

1 day

aerogems

Silver badge

Reply Icon

I suppose it is getting to be election time and Trump and his surrogates have already started ramping up laying the groundwork for a second go at "the election was stolen" with their rhetoric... so, it really shouldn't be surprising that the more gullible amongst the populace start echoing the same sentiments and finding new and "creative" ways to apply the conspiracy theory. I mean, far be it for pesky things like facts and reason get in the way. Because the idea that I just sit around all day making sock puppet accounts on a trivial site like El Reg, and then cycle through them just to downvote people I don't agree with makes so much more sense than there are thousands of people visiting this site over the course of a given day and they are twat shaming people like you. You are in a cult. Seek professional help.

Somehow or the other, I think the idgit called aerogems is himself in an alternate reality caused by either ingestion of an "enhancement" formulation, or has found how to unlock the computer of the floor nurse where he is being treated for "chemical imbalances". Go back to bed, take your meds, and leave discussions to the adults. There are no politics involved, it's all in your head.

BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=vitameatavegiman&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7dGmM3TktRE

Just in case you didn't know what that is.

Re: ... to be continued ...

Best read with a North American interpretation of some of the symbol characters.

I think they actually meant VitaMeataVegaMan.

BOFH: Smells like Teams spirit

Re: can I call you Chris?

Better yet, answer, "I'd rather you emailed me than call, then we have a record of our conversation."

Google fires 28 staff after sit-in protest against Israeli cloud deal ends in arrests

Re: Take this as a lesson

Re: Take this as a lesson

Some would argue that YOU have a "condoning acts of genocide" problem!

The question here is do you condone the acts of genocide committed by the Palestinians?

US insurers use drone photos to deny home insurance policies

Reply Icon

I seem to recall this has been discussed on El Reg before and you can fall foul of the 'discharging a firearm within a cubit of habitation' type laws. Far simpler (although probably just as illegal) would be a scanner looking for drone frequency signals which kicks in a jammer when it finds them.

Funny, I have a pistol range in my back yard. Local deputies use it all the time.

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Re: The sure fire 10p investment...

let me guess... you're from the western side of the Atlantic Pond.....

I don't know of anyone on the correct side of the pond to use the phrase "10p". Purely a Brit saying since here we say "10 cents". We don't have pennies, we have cents.

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

Re: Why does a software company need company cars?

Ever heard of trains or maybe the more efficient Zoom ?

How many houses, or business, have a train station at the front door?

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

Did anybody notice?

That the flashing light on the top of the car was blue? Folks must have thought it was a police car, or it came into a crowd on a street closed for the festival.

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Re: Yeah, I used HP cartridges & still got screwed over

I do have an HP AIO inkjet, which I have told HP by email, that this is the last HP printer I will ever buy. I also told them that I will inform my customers to not buy HP due to the problem with drivers, ink replacement, unable to use the scan function unless you log into your HP account in the cloud, and just how "helpful" HP support is.

I have figured a way to print without any connection to the printer and told HP "support" .

The HP "support" person was not impressed when I told them how I was going to inform my customers with a retort of go ahead.

He kinda got the message when I explained that I sell the 8600 and 8700 printers by the pallet load (one attorney bought the 8700 AIO for all the paralegals and attorneys). He liked the idea of being able to send a message to a certain para immediately instead of the company email to the printers email.

When I told him to look up the sales figures from my store, he kinda got defensive about me telling the bad news to customers.

Every store now needs to post that article in the HP printer section so consumers can know what HP thinks of them. Maybe HP will come to their senses and back down.

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

Re: The older the better

I don't believe you have experienced any of that. I've driven Fords, Toyota's, Chevys, Dodges, Nissans, a lot of different models while looking for a new car. Nothing like what you describe.

Re: The older the better

I've had to disable all those "features " on my wife's' car. Driving on the interstate it brakes any time someone comes between you and the car you've maintained what the car thinks is the "correct" distance, and it doesn't do it in a nice way. Try to move over a lane, the steering wheel would actually fight you to go over the line. The worst one was the "You seem to be tired, please pull over now" messages. The car would try to make you pull to the emergency lane. I've got experience with these cars. You obviously don't.

NASA, Lockheed Martin reveal subtly supersonic X-59 plane

Re: Slow down

Trump disqualified himself.

As much as I hate political discussion in a science thread, I've got to ask these questions.

How did he disqualify himself?

What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

Even if he is off the ballot, there is always the write in vote.

Sorry about continuing this folks.

A tale of 2 casino ransomware attacks: One paid out, one did not

Re: They wouldn't have done this 60 years ago

The next press conference 48 hours later:

We have called this conference to inform our guests, the public, and the media, that the threat of release of information from the recent data breach has been resolved.

All data and all media containing that data have been turned over to us. We are now contacting anyone whose account was found in the data breach to log onto their accounts, check for any problems, and to change the passwords to a minimum of 8 letters, 2 numbers, and a special character for a total of 11 inputs.

We are assured that the instigators will no longer be able to cause problems like this again, and that their network has been dismantled and destroyed.

We would like to thank the media for their response to our earlier requests in getting out the directives to the criminal element that caused this disturbance, and hope you will report that any more issues of this type will be met with similar enforcement.

Reporter: Sir! Does this have anything to do with the explosion a fire that burned down a warehouse complex in RickyTikistan last night?

Speaker: Where is that Rikistan place?

Reporter 2: Do you have any information on why 9 people were found dead, hanging from the railing of the police building? And why was their fingers and toes removed? Worse yet, did you know that their skin had been practically peeled from their bodies, including their faces?

Speaker: Somebody must have been really mad at whoever they were.

Reporter 3: Something different here, but I would like to acknowledge you for what you did this morning. This morning you grilled chunks of meat and then took it down to the homeless groups and gave the cooked meat to some of their dogs and invited the group to be at the rear area for lunch today. A very humanitarian guesture.

Speaker: Thank you, we try to do good in this mean old world for those less fortunate. We have to leave so we can set up for the big picnic outside, so we again thank you for coming to the press conference. Oh yeah. You are all invited to come and talk with those attending, and eat a little if you want.

A few minutes later in an upstairs suite. Well Mr. negotiator, here is your million dollars we agreed upon. Keep your mouth shut, don't try anything like this again, and you won't become dog meat.

Re: They wouldn't have done this 60 years ago

A press conference from the Las Vegas Strip:

Good afternoon. The Casino has had a data breach. The ones who have illegally broken into our database with personal information of our guests is demanding a ransom of 30 million in crypto for the promise of them not releasing the data.

We spoke with their negotiator, interviewed him, and extracted the data we need to start the manhunt for those who thought this was a good idea. They should in a few hours receive the negotiator and understand the error of their ways.

We called the media here to announce that we will not be paying the ransom. We wish to let those who have created this problem know that we do take this seriously, but we will not tolerate it.

Any and all data, including the media it is stored on, will need to be returned, intact, with no, repeat, no distribution to us within 24 hours. There will be no recriminations other than the legal ones for the actual data breach.

If the data, any of the data, has been distributed, clients contacted, accounts hacked, then the gloves are off. If our demands are not met, the gloves are off.

24 hours from now, 10 million in cash will be placed in a reward account for return of the data, media holding the data, and physical proof that the miscreants can no longer steal data and demand a ransom for it's "possible return". You, the ones who stole the data, are not eligible for the reward.

In a few hours you will realize just how seriously we take this affront to the security of our guests and clients.

We know the requisite 4 Ws. We know Who you are, Where you are, When you are there, and What you did to enter our system.

We will not at this time entertain questions from the media, we do request that you put this out immediately.

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Re: Jedes Schrift'l ist ein Gift'l

I sometimes need the subtitles for Top Gear when Freddie is speaking, and I'm Scottish, from the southern US.

Missing tomatoes ketchup with ISS crew after almost a year lost in space

Sonny Carter took Finchers Bar-b-Que on a mission. The sandwich was no problem, but the Brunswick Stew had to be thickened so it would stay in the cup.

https://www.finchersbbqga.net

Check out the menu. One of the old locations was only a mile from where we lived when I was a kid. If the wind was right, you could smell the meat being smoked overnight. Back then we slept with the windows open (note: before a/c)

Hunters International leaks pre-op plastic surgery pics in negotiation no-no

Find these guys, extradite them to the US, particularly the deep south. There are ways to get the information out of them that folks across the pond wouldn't know about.

Astronomers spot collision between two exoplanets, both feared vaporized

Re: Nah ... it just had an encounter

An Illudium Q-36 Explosive space Modulator?

Engineers pave the way for building lunar roads with Moon dust

Re: Inevitably

https://cals.cornell.edu/nysltap-local-roads/what-cold-place-recycling-and-what-are-its-advantages

This has been used in the US for some time. A lot of roads in the boonies have been repaved this way. Less materials trucked in, less fuel used, less wear and tear on the roads.

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Re: Mem'ries...

The result was that hardware that will run Windows 10 perfectly well will not accept the new operating system.

How many remember trying to run Win 95 hardware after an "upgrade" to Win98? Printers, scanners, sound cards, video cards, hardly any would run on Win98 after the upgrade.

The alternative to stopping climate change is untested carbon capture tech

Re: Carbon capture at home?

Well, I've got about 15K trees on my property, and my neighbor has pretty close to that amount. Add to that we live almost in the center of a small town, so I think we help "adjust" the co2 in our area. We agreed to not cut down live trees unless they were blown over by a storm, and use the wood to help heat our homes, which causes us to pull less power from the local grid during really cold days.

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

Re: Should this be so easy?

I actually built up some new customers who had problems with their new computers that weren't bought at my location. Guy brought in his computer saying it just wouldn't start up past the blinking cursor.

He had taken it back several times to the store he bought it at and they couldn't be any help since they were basically a department store who sold boxed computer sets as a sideline.

He set the computer down on my tech bench and i connected it up to my system. Turned it on, blinking cursor came up, turned off. Looked around the back, told him I can fix it.

Put both hands on the front and back, and in my best faith healer voice said "A-HEALLL". Turned computer back on, up came the POST screen and then the set up screen.

The guy was speechless. Asked how much he owed and I told him nothing. All I did was change the power switch from 220 to 115 when I was holding onto the computer.

Turns out, he was a local pastor and told his congregation he had met the best person to work on computers. Got a lot of customers from that.

No, no, no! Disco joke hit bum note in the rehab center

How about In-A-Godda-Da-Vida, with the drum solo.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

Re: Stupid

Frankly, an off-the-shelf .22 LR modified slightly to allow gloved operation should be all that's necessary into the foreseeable future. Ammo's lightweight, too, making it cheap to lift out of Earth's gravity well.

Look up the trigger actuator for winter operations made for the M-1 rifle. There were several different ones that could be used by simply using the gloved hand to squeeze "the bar" and pull the trigger. Others simply looped through the trigger guard, secured with a set screw and you pushed down on the extended trigger pad.

BOFH: Postman BOFH's Special Delivery Service

https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/crisco-house-slides-onto-the-market-in-macon/

here is the house the developer of Crisco built in my home town.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: Used to buy Lexmark

Back in the day I used to buy Lexmark inkjet printers, cost of printer with a black and a color cartridge was £19.99.

I worked at a big box computer/office supply store until I retired. I had several Lexmark printers because back then you had one for photo printing, one for the odd print that needed color, and a laser to print most of your pages.

Well, up comes a firmware update for the huge for home laser printer. Works fine for about a week. Then, every printer came up "end of life". Didn't matter which one, all were "end of life" and would do nothing.

Calls to Lexmark were wasted time since they told me basically that my printers no longer worked since they were at their "end of life". Didn't care that one was so new that replacement cartridges had just been bought since the ones that came with it were almost empty. No help at all. Told them where I worked and I would be telling all my customers about what Lexmark had done to my printers and how much it cost to replace them. Very few of their products were sold at my store from there on out. Only exception was the $10.99 printer that was sold for a while and only used one cartridge for printing. Cost of that was $29.99. Sold one hell of a lot of those printers, but no refills. They discontinued that printer a couple months after it came out and pulled all the ink from the stores.

Lexmark then got the contract with Dell to supply their printers. That didn't last too long either.

lexmark closed the inkjet division and made only laser printers for a while, in 2016 APEX pretty much bought them out but the laser printers are still under the Lexmark name.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

The correct way is 30/Jun/2023, which is very hard to misinterpret

NOPE: June 30, 2023

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

As for 4th of July, note that they don't similarly say 11th of September, so it's not merely a convention to refer to significant dates in D/M order. This makes me wonder if the discrepancy is then a historical thing based on their linguistic influences back when the 4th of July occurred - i.e. they started referring to it as the 4th of July simply because that's how they said dates back then, and that particular combination of words has then stuck as a way to refer to the event even though the way in which they say dates in general has subsequently changed?

No, not at all. The heading on the Declaration Of Independence has the date written out "July 4, 1776". You can say July4th, talk about what you're going to do for the 4th, if you are taking a trip for the 4th, or even ask "planning to do something on the 4th?

The date has basically become a question from the middle of June till July 4th. The date to us in the USA is so important to us that we say the date as if it was a title, much like Christmas Day is a title for December 25th.

The day to us is just that important.

Pakistan turns its back on crypto to keep anti-terrorism watchdogs happy

Re: I feel bad for Pakistanis

Yep. Think of us in the US. High inflation, higher prices, and the Dems want to install a national digital currency.

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Re: Short, shameful confession

Like the ones I used to program the CNC machines to produce the brackets to hold coffee pots on the KC-135?

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

Re: Compassion

Only three stars? Oh, doesn't work in the US. Alrighty then.