Posts by ICL1900-G3

The search company that plants trees just launched a Linux browser to help Europe battle big tech

Re: open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants

Try not to be silly, but if you must be, do keep it to yourself.

From watches to passwords on paper, everything that's old is new again

Paper office

As a slight detour, a late colleague worked in the travel industry, for s well-known package holiday company. Before being computerised, they had a system of huge boards with sticky paper containing booking details. One weekend, the air conditioning went haywire and turned the room with the bookings into a sauna, with predictable results. Backup? What backup?

Agreed. It was, unlike XP, an OS for grown-ups. I kept it as long as I could.

Windows XP was released to manufacturing a quarter of a century ago

Windows 2000

XP was a relative of Windows 2000, but worse. Much worse. Still better than 9x/ME, though.

Casio decides it's about time the simple digital watch got a little smarter

Pah!

Very happy with the Omega Seamaster my ma bought me for passing my O levels almost exactly 60 years ago.

Debian is 33, Haiku is 25, and neither is standing still

Agreed, started on Slack but have been largely on Debian ever since and it just works. I don't care if the applications aren't the latest version. Occasional foray into LMDE (still Debian at heart!) but can see no real reason to move away.

Flock surveillance backlash mounts as fiendish Halloween plans circulate

Re: We..

If you've nothing to hide... whatever...

ICE boss to agents: Leave the Meta spy glasses at home

ICE job interview

Do you like killing? Yes? You're in!

Re: Specs offenders

I don't think many, apart from Trumpistas, would be likely to include ICE in the 'good guys' set.

Postgres pioneer credits Oracle with helping his database take over the world

Here's hoping..

.. he's right.

Tim King, AmigaDOS royalty, dies aged 71

Wow!

Clever people. You have to love them.

This JCB doesn't dig – it does 406 mph

Re: Useless facts

He's got a lot to answer for. A typical 'it works for me, I don't care about you ' approach.

Give Google the boot by building your own search engine

Re: Other efforts...

Thanks for that. Just tried marginalia and immediately found a fascinating site about old cars. That's the day gone.

Five years after quitting a job, developer's former boss asked for rapid tech support

Re: Well done

After being made redundant from being a corporate apparatchik, I set up a company doing IT support, much more enjoyable.

Ten years after I had retired, I got a phone call from the wife of a former customer asking me to come and fix her dishwasher. I explained I was retired, and had been an IT wallah, not a plumber, but she was not to be put off. So I had a go and fixed it. Paid for a good night out for Mrs ICL and me.

Rent-a-GPU outfit Nebius promises rapid 1 GW powerup plan isn't nebulous

Re: Bubble go pop!

To say nothing of yet more pointless, dangerous emissions.

Smooth-talking fraudsters clone contactless cards, authorize payments in just 13 minutes

Private Eye

There was a cartoon in, I think, Private Eye, titled 'Somewhere in Nigeria' showing a man seated at a computer, completely surrounded by bundles of dollar bills. He's saying "I can't believe it. I can't give the stuff away!"

If only it were true.

I'm glad to say I got one of those emails only this morning, and I'm nearing 80. My friends and I are looking forward to watching the video of which they speak.

The Future is for Billionaires – the rest of us will get open weight AI models, maybe

Re: Creation (verb) : The act of making other people do something and claiming the credit.

Actually, it's a noun, but otherwise I agree with you.

Best of times?

I'm approaching the end of my eighth decade and I can honestly say things have never been as bad as they are now. We might have lots of new shiny stuff but quality of life is in the toilet.

Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

Absolutely. In the UK we used to have Personnel who were largely on your side. They became HR who most decidedly are not.

Re: Ever pick up a law book?

I have to agree. I find it close to impossible to believe that anyone who had learned to read would be unaware of italics by the time they reached working age.

These crazy support stories are becoming ever more unlikely.

Microsoft tells engineers to curb their token-burning enthusiasm

Re: coming soon to every corp

Works for Trump!

London cops handed victim's new address and number to her stalker, watchdog says

Red Dwarf

In one episode, Holly said he had an iq of 6000..'or the same as 6000 PE teachers '. Maybe that should have been Metropolitan Police Officers.

Keeping yesterday's computers ticking takes more than nostalgia

More

Articles like this, please, much preferable to reading about some incremental increase in resolution of yet another boring phone.

I really admire people who can do this and I even understand a lot of the electronics, but unfortunately I am that person who solders with a spoon.

For anyone interested in this stuff, I heartily recommend Usagi Electric on YouTube, the chap is a genius and a great presenter. Recommended.

https://m.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric

New Boeing finally gets going, 15 years after debut

Re: 777 menus

Absolutely right. Especially when the going gets tough during turbulence and you're trying to poke a button on that touchscreen.

Dev proves LLMs will run on anything – even a $10 microcontroller

Now I know I'm past it

I've been in IT since 1970 (360/30, since you asked) but I hardly understood a word of that. It's very clever... I think?

NASA puts astronauts’ lives in the hands of Tesla’s flaky Cybertruck

Re: SpaceX won’t survive…

What an insightful comment. I find people resort to swearing when they don't have any argument, don't you?

UK mulls making employers ask before installing bossware

Than goodness employers are beyond reproach. I suggest reading about the early 20th century labour problems in the US to see what untrammeled capitalism is like.

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"

I bought it when it came out on cd in the late 80s..it was still pricey, but just about affordable.

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

Re: Ah great

You are Nigel Farage and I claim my £5.

Digital sovereignty is real in Europe. The UK? Not so much

Re: Shame on ewe

I think it's supposed to make the author look cool and edgy...or something like that...

Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

Re: Software veganism

Well, I am, and just couldn't be arsed to reply, but thank you anyway. You're absolutely right.

LG kills McAfee pop-up after Windows boss steps in

Good grief

McAfee! Does anyone knowingly use it?

UK pumps £708 million into its future fighter jet

I think it's disingenuous to say 'determined to go to war'. That particular comment would be better aimed at Mr Putin, he of the 'special military operation'.

Amsterdam activists throw acid at Microsoft datacenter project

Don't give up the day job. Comedy is not your strong suit.

You're absolutely right... however, 'legally' seems to be a very movable feast, depending considerably on the size of your wallet. We are facing an increasingly dubious future as a species and, as ever Big Business's reply is 'shareholder value'.

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

I agree entirely. I admire Mr Torvalds enormously, he's a lot cleverer than me. However, that doesn't mean he's always right.

LisaFPGA brings Apple's magnificent misfire back in programmable logic

Re: FPGA?

Thank you, Bazza, that was really interesting.

User crippled a network while trying to learn Nmap

What? And noone bothered to check what was running on his laptop... looked through command history...?

Britain's cloud habit has become a billion-pound risk

Why?

Why do people engage in this folly? Because they're dedicated followers of fashion.

AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo makes local AI look easy, but at $4K, easy doesn't come cheap

Down payment on a car?

That's more than I would pay for a car!

Even banks and hyperscalers are now sounding the alarm about the AI bubble

Re: Bloody crap posting of a so called article

Well... I agree with you. I bailed out after all the 'I was like...'. For me, teenspeak tends to undermine any argument.

But, on a larger scale, The Reg has become dull, dull, dull ... with the exception of most of Liam's articles.

Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

Top quote from a top book by a top man!

Trump-shuttered climate change site back online in nonprofit hands

Re: Life after Trump

Nope. Very stable genius, said so himself.

Even the Secret Service won't use company-issued phones

TDS

They have it because he's a complete and utter twat.

FreeBSD 15.1 lands, but desktop dabblers still have to draw their own GUI

Hard

I'm too entrenched in - and satisfied with - Linux, been there since Slackware floppies. BSD always reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon about vinyl..."What first got me into vinyl was the expense and the inconvenience."

I'm sure it's great, I've dabbled a few times but it always seems to me you have to work really hard to get to what works easily on Linux. I happily confess to ignorance but will need a lot of convincing to change!

Microsoft Access finally breaks free of its 22-inch form limit

Re: I didn't know that Access was still kicking

One of my customers was dead keen on Access 'so we can maintain it ourselves'. They initially wanted an SMB shared db, but I talked them into a MySQL backend. Still not my finest hour. Access is truly dreadful.

Ukraine puts its Russian war trophies online for allies to pick apart

Lenin

Watch the most excellent Heimat 3 and your wish will be granted.