Posts by STOP_FORTH

Shoe company says it's getting into AI infrastructure and yes this is the top

Deception

Long Island Iced Tea is one of the most deceptively strong drinks I have ever had.

Bit like some scrumpy ciders.

Windows asks a networking question on a Stratford billboard

At last

Year of the billboard for Linux?

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

Re: Modest proposal

OK, I'll settle for a Venn diagram.

Start with a big ellipse labelled Word Processing software that uses ASCII or Unicode.

Re: Modest proposal

No I wasn't!

It's comprehensive, but probably has too much detail.

I'd drop most of the point release details, maybe just keep the ones immediately preceding or succeeding forks.

I'd probably turn it through ninety degrees and have the timeline running down the side.

Earliest date at the top, obviously. Top posting is for inferior e-mail systems.

I wonder how long it would take me to convert all of the schematics on Wikipedia to ASCII art?

Or all of the pictures to woodcuts?

Hmm, change all ye spellinge to olde tyme and call it "Ye Projecte GutenWiki".

Sounds like a job for AI.

Modest proposal

This article could be immensely improved with a diagram showing the relationships between the various office suites with a timeline along the bottom.

ASCII art would be acceptable.

It was good enough for early RFCs and is easier than fighting with a user-hostile drawing package.

Re: politics and power grabs...

Thank you for a concise explanation.

Artemis II blasts off on first crewed lunar mission since Apollo

Re: Orange is the new... something

Or cosmonaut space suits?

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

Re: A question

Well, I've upvoted you, because you are the first mongoose that has ever replied to one of my posts.

Do mongooses and civets get along?

Don't mind me, nobody on the Internet knows that I'm a dog.

A question

What about the coffee that has been through a civet?

Is kopi luwak good for you?

Is civet brown matter good for your grey matter?

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

Re: Well of course...

I am motivated by the fact that this post should reinstate my silver badge.

Unless I can't count.

Only Trump can decide when cyberwar turns into real war

So...

If social media companies breach European privacy rules....?

Windows 95 let installers trash its files then fixed the mess behind their backs

Agile installers

Move fast and break things.

NASA's lunar reboot is long on ambition, short on answers

Space Hoppers

For that late 60s and early 70s vibe.

Country that put backdoors into Cisco routers to spy on world bans foreign routers

The Internet routes around.......

Stupidity?

Cryptographers engage in war of words over RustSec bug reports and subsequent ban

Fixing rust problem

WD40 and percussive maintenance.

Also bang heads together.

Starship may chauffeur Orion to the Moon, as NASA mulls ditching SLS after Artemis V

Re: Suggestion

Photos, or it didn't happen!

Suggestion

What's wrong with Cavourite? It was used on the first manned moon-landing after all.

Feds disrupt monster IoT botnets behind record-breaking DDoS attacks

Re: Internet of Trash

Largely agree, but IoT devices are now being used by utility companies in the UK for remote sensing/monitoring.

Nobody needs a snitch 'fridge, though.

Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin applies to launch 51,000 datacenter satellites

Broken dreams

I was half thinking of taking up astrophotography as a hobby. Seems a bit pointless now. I can just draw lots of lines on a piece of paper, take a picture and invert it.

Rats!

Re: Cooling?

Fill space with air and add a cooling fan, problem solved!

Caution: if you fill the solar system with air at one (Earth) atmospheric pressure out to the Oort Cloud you will create a black hole. This is not advised.

Jaguar Land Rover's cyber bailout sets worrying precedent, watchdog warns

To be fair to Lloyds, they only had trouble because the Government twisted their arm to take over an ailing bank which torpedoed their financials.

Typical IT department incompetence

They should have replaced all of the bulkhead outriggers on the firewall before double-declutching.

Amateurs.

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

Old joke

What do you get the day after you receive your Gold Card?

A letter from your wife's solicitor.

Well it's slightly more complicated than that! Most European boundaries have changed over time, some more than others. I believe at least part of what we now call Finland used to be part of what the old definition of Scandinavia was.

Still many Finns like to think of themselves as Scandinavian, even though they are not.

Let's ask Linus.

BBC World Service digital switch backfires as online audience drops

Re: "Some language services that were moved to digital-only distribution"

Some people in the BBC were "surprised" by the decision to add Optimod dynamic range compression to the FM transmitters.

I believe it was originally designed for AM transmission.

I have been told that the IBA banned dynamic range compression devices on Independent Local Radio transmitters.

I have also been told that the Local Radio engineers would reinstate their "CTF" compressors after their annual IBA inspections.

People like monkeying around with sound systems.

Perhaps the Beeb/Arqiva could remove the Yankee compression from the end of the beautiful British compression and see if that improves things. This would be cheaper than re-engineering the whole system on a whim.

Concatenating dissimilar compression system (audio or video) can cause problems. All lossy compression systems produce artefacts some of which may be indiscernible to the human ear or eye. Concatenating dissimilar systems can exacerbate the infidelities of both systems.

The output of NICAM is 14 bit audio. 10 to 14 of these bits will be identical to the original bits. Modern audio compression tools also use "masking" but in a completely different way to NICAM.

No lossy compression is perfect. Modern audio compression has had problems in the past with pre-echo, anything that sounds vaguely like white noise (wind, rain, waves on a pebbly beach, etc), applause, percussion etc. Most of these seem to have been fixed, more or less, but they still sound horrid if you lower the bitrates to whatever they use on DAB these days.

I'm sorry, audio quality on FM in the UK peaked sometime in the 1980s.

I hope the new NICAM equipment is easier to fix than the old stuff. Those PCBs would make a grown man cry. Or do they just luzz it out the window when it breaks these days?

We used to fix stuff, dammit!

Get off my lawn!

Re: Got it wrong again, Dad...

I knew a guy who had worked at one of the World Service transmitter sites.

The transmitter fields were quite large so they had a bicycle to get around. After swapping aerial feeds with a big, insulated (wooden?) pole they would sometimes see ball-lightning if the air was humid enough.

This would sometimes drift towards the metal frame of the bicycle as the poor engineer tried to escape from the aerial field.

Sometimes the ball would demodulate the broadcast signal. (AM is easy to demodulate, all you need is a diode or a ball of plasma!)

He said it was an interesting experience, pedalling like mad being pursued by a light blue ball shouting at you in Pushtu. (Other languages are available, or at least they were in the 80s.)

Re: "Some language services that were moved to digital-only distribution"

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Re: "Some language services that were moved to digital-only distribution"

And Otto krekt put that comma in the first it's. Honest.

Re: "Some language services that were moved to digital-only distribution"

OK, just checked some dates, Energis did not exist until 1991, so digital video on PDH running through fibre optic wrapped around electricity cables would have been sometime between 1991 and 1995.

All other wording and dates are slightly ambiguous as I cannot be bothered to go to the loft and read through reams of dusty paper for you lot.

Re: "Some language services that were moved to digital-only distribution"

Quite correct. The Beeb was transmitting it's radio services to transmitters using multiplexed PCM coding in the Seventies. Before the end of the Seventies they were using a proprietary digital compression system called NICAM. (Look it up, it's quite clever.)

Digital audio to the user had to wait for DAB.(The bubbling mud transmission system.)

Digital audio for television was implemented in the Seventies, but again it was converted to analogue before transmission to the viewers.

Stereo digital audio (for TV) to the home commenced in 1990 (or thereabouts) using a modified form of NICAM.

Digital video was used in the Eighties via Energis fibres but again this was converted to analogue before transmission.

Digital video and audio to the home (DTTH) began in 1998.

All of these systems were in use before the turn of the millennium so using "digital" as a synonym for online is gloriously incorrect.

Re: Fundamental blindspot

'Ere, I've lost me bleedin' silver badge again! I swear it was still there a couple of weeks ago.

I suppose I'll have to start posting more regularly?

Re: Fundamental blindspot

I think you'll find they call that "cross-promotion"!

Repeats are "another chance to see".

Orwell worked in Broadcasting House (Ministry of Truth). Where do you think he got the idea for NewSpeak?

I worked there too, but have yet to write any dystopian novels or contribute any new words to the English language.

Fundamental blindspot

They should have announced the changes in as many places as possible.

The eejits have never understood the concept of advertising!

Everything needed to make DNA and RNA found in asteroid sample

Re: Up to a point, Lord Copper

I don't believe in a Creator, creationism, or magic.

Nor do I believe that astronomers should be proposing things which are not implied by their observations.

This is not science.

Re: Up to a point, Lord Copper

That doesn't preclude the possibility that amino acids formed on the earth and in other parts of the primordial solar system disk.

The proposal that amino acids formed in the disk and were brought to earth by comets and asteroids has not been proven.

I liked Rudyard Kipling's Just So stories as a child, but nobody ever told me they were "scientific".

We found some stuff at point A and point B does not imply that this particular stuff at B had to all come from A.

Re: Up to a point, Lord Copper

You can't downvote Maxwell's Demon. Unless you want it to be very hot/cold wherever you are. Or a vacuum.

Unlikely things are not impossible merely unlikely.

Up to a point, Lord Copper

It is also possible that some supernatural entity created life on Earth and the component parts have been leaking into the Cosmos for the last 6006/13.8 billion years, surely?

I'm not saying it's likely, but the direction of travel for these molecules has not been established, not have the prerequisite conditions for their formation.

Iran's 'chosen users' get 'privileged access' despite internet blackout for masses

Re: "Civilians relying on Dutch shortwave radio broadcast for outside information"

Famously, the BBC World Service of old would reduce the hours of, or completely suspend, language broadcasts to parts of the world that were about to experience upheavals/invasions etc.

This was done at the request of their paymasters of the time the FCO. (Or maybe they were just the FO back then?)

The two examples that spring to mind are the South American service just before the Argentinian invasion of The Falklands and the Afghan (and possibly other?) service before the Russians had their turn at being humiliated.

Those Foreign Office types really know their stuff!

Linus Torvalds: Someone ‘more competent who isn't afraid of numbers past the teens’ will take over Linux one day

Re: 19.19

How often are you releasing a kernel?

Re: 19.19

Modified Julian Dates are the way to go. Unambiguous, geeky and sortable.

ERP isn't dead yet – but most execs are planning the wake

Of course, we 'ad it tough.

Here's my ideal ERP system.

You enter your hours for the day.

Travel to the airport (captive but non-productive time)

Hanging around the airport (ditto)

11 hour flight (ditto)

Travel to hotel (ditto)

Go straight to customer's site to perform upgrade/fault analysis/recordings/whatever (what I'm actually paid to do)

This is all done during the night because customer won't let me access their system during the day. Did I mention their time-zone is 9 hours ahead of mine?

Wait around site until 10 AM for first of many meetings with customer to explain what I have done, what I expect to do and what I expect to be the outcome. (What I'm actually paid to do.)

Return to hotel and fill in time sheet which contains more than 24 hours in one day.

Go to sleep.

Meanwhile back at the office Johnny Seat-Warmer can't enter his hours into system and is staring at a screenful of error messages.

Must have more than one time zone.

Must have more than eight hours in day.

We know you don't get overtime but all hours are billable to somebody.

Travelling to coffee machine does not count.

If you refuse to comply you will have to speak to HR.

I'd buy a system like that, but I'd refuse to pay for the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 module and sack anyone who requested it.

Flipping one bit leaves AMD CPUs open to VM vuln

Misleading article

That's just the undocumented "Make me one with everything bit".

You know, Zen.

Linus Torvalds tries vibe coding, world still intact somehow

Icons insufficiently nuanced

Just add another fifty or so.

Through gritted teeth, Apple and Google allow alternative app stores in Japan

EU Android

I already have a choice of browser and search engine on my Blighty-SIMmed Android. I haven't travelled outside Europe for quite a while now. Were I to do so, and swap to a local SIM, are there restrictions on what I can do with my 'phone?

I also use F-Droid, is this geographically restricted?

Asking because I'm too lazy to look up the answer when I can just wait for a condescending commentard to supply the answer along with a heaping of mildly sarcastic abuse.

I don't need to do this, but it's nearly Christmas and these people need to exercise their superiority.

Icon: I know that bloody 'phone is somewhere.

And the winner of the Microsoft Christmas sweater is...

Crikey!

Don't know about peak Microsoft, but I think I may have achieved peak STOP_FORTH.

Mentioned on The Register, is there any greater achievement?

I guess everything will be downhill from here?

Space telescopes are being photobombed by satellites, and the problem is slated to get much worse

Have a vote

Kitten videos or galaxies?

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

Not a peak, more of a hillock

Windows Task Manager on XP SP2.

Rust on the Moon? Far-side dirt says yes, actually

Bloody Rust

It's everywhere!

Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut

Sudo is not required

Come over to the reckless side.

In Puppy Linux (and it's many derivatives/relatives) you are always root!

Retail giant Kingfisher rejects SAP ERP upgrade plan

Anecdote, that may be true

I used to work for a biggish (20,000+) outfit and am still in touch with some ex-colleagues. When SAP came a-calling (this was after I left) their negotiating position was interesting and straightforward. It amounted to them being able to supply a vanilla system at reasonable cost to which they could add widgets to customise the system to your particular requirements.

If the widget had already been developed for another customer, you got it for free (or cheap - I wasn't there, this is second hand knowledge).

If the widget was a brand new one or an existing one that needed alteration, you paid an arm and a leg for it.

Biggish Outfit negotiators realised they were being stiffed when they were asked to pay for e.g. a widget that dealt with people working 9 to 5 on weekdays.

In fact, every single feature they asked for was a brand new widget that would require extensive/expensive development billable hours.

After some pushback the initial price dropped substantially.

Either they have very stupid and/or greedy salesmen or they are in the third stage of company lifecycle, where they are run by accountants. (Not surprising, considering that ERP is basically a tool for accountants.)

All of the above info came from an e-mail from an unreliable narrator so is obviously only allegedly true.

Mind you I used their product at Even Bigger Co (120,000+) and it was absolute shite. Though that may have been a poor implementation of a perfect software tool/system. Or not.