Posts by The commentard formerly known as Mister_C

They've only gone and made Doom run in a PDF file

Re: Is there anywhere Doom has not been implemented?

Two spring to mind -

20+ years ago I saw a web page where the writer had gutted a CRT monitor and printed the various sprites on art board. Put them together like a Victorian childrens' theatre. Frame rate was measured in dpf (days per frame).

Fairly recently I read another account on t'web where the writer declared that an attempt to "render frames using LED strips and a Raspberry Pi"... didn't work. IIRC the summary of the paper was "the less said about that, the better." Shame, might've been a fun read [hint, hint to the Contributing Editor]

Re: How much ink?

or a Vegas dealer to riffle shuffle

Is it really the plan to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal? It's been a weird week

Re: Insane troll logic budget

yup. check the lyrics to "the star spangled banner". The "rockets' red glare" refers to Congreve rockets fired from HMS Erebus.

Re: Rocks

we're gonna have to get a bigger rock

Devs sent into security panic by 'feature that was helpful … until it wasn't'

please consider this comment Rhetorical

what else do you intend to eat on Date Night?

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Re: Bathing attire

I thought you meant as in "let's off-road". Then I remembered the boat bit, so technically sort of almost right.

you forgot the icon! --->

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Re: 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Wilkinsons. They were an eye opener into the world of equipping a home. And also allowed me to frame a simple rule for rating a town's prosperity as inversely proportional to the size of their Wilco

Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list

"Microsoft's advice? "To prevent issues, do not install Windows 11"

The rest of the article is unnecessary.

I've said it before and I full expect to say it again. TRADING STANDARDS NEEDS TO GROW A PAIR AND TELL MICROS~1 TO PROVIDE SOFTWARE THAT IS FIT FOR PURPOSE OR JUST CEASE AND DESIST. I don't care if they whinge "software is hard". FMCG is hard if you want to make it safe and resilient. Cars is hard if you want to make it safe and resilient. Even food is hard if you want to make it safe and resilient. Everything is hard if you want to make it safe and resilient. Why do software companies think they count as special?

Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights

Can != May != Should

I said "I think I could do that," meaning I have the technical chops to achieve it. And [Joyce's wife] said, "yes you can," and I took that as license to mean, "yes, you can do it."

And that's the root of the data slurping explained.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Re: "Paper Trey-al surely?"

Trey bien, all of vous

Aliens, spy balloons, or drones? SUV-sized mystery objects spotted in US skies

I think the only time you might hear a sonic boom from a Harrier would be just before the boom of lithobraking.

British Army zaps drones out of the sky with laser trucks

"If we ever manage to replace warfare with love, they could have amoured vehicles."

To reprise the 1970s truck graffiti

"Make love not war. Ask driver for details"

Re: Microwave?

and a bell to go "bing" when it's finished

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

For them on the naughty list

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

Re: When stuck in a hole

and they're digging it round when it ought t'be square.

Job seekers call BS on the workplace AI revolution

Re: Time savings

I would prefer the second boss over the first. More short term pain for me but I know he'll get his comeuppance. First boss will just keep screwing me over until I quit and then he'll just carry on the rinse / repeat cycle on my successor.

D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify

forgot to say

There's also the "not of merchantable quality" clause. And (bearing in mind that IANAL) this product probably qualifies.

Re: Is there no product liability at all?

over here in the UK we have the "Sale of goods act" for non-commercial sales. If the product was defective then it falls/fails under the category of "not fit for purpose". Anybody who bought one can (or should) return it to the retailer and ask for their money back. Probably have to accept a reduction due to fair wear-and-tear but it's then up to Amazon / ebuyer / $retailer to release the hounds on D-Link. And maybe if this actually happened then tech companies would get their shit into gear and not hide behind the "but this is soooo complicated" excuse. Software companies too....

</rant>

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: This is why ergonomics matters

Depends on the tape being used to seal the box. A ball point pen tip is quite effective on normal parcel tape.

NASA fires up super-quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft

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

put a politician in the front segment, stream a press conference just after takeoff and the nose will be extended by the time you need it

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Interrupt driven keyboard.

"if you disconnected the keyboard, it required a reboot to see it again?"

or pressing F1. On the missing keyboard.

Re: Just move some disks

Inshallah, Bukra, & Ma’lesh

God willing, tomorrow, perhaps

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

Re: Making things worse

YY U R

YY U B

I C U R

YY 4 me

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: People are too much of a pussy to actually bottle up and change the time

Seeing the discussion resurface yet again is the way I remember that we're getting close to changing the clocks just so that flat earthers can pretend that the day / night ratio isn't a function of an oblate spheroid lump of rock with an inclined axis moving around a star on a slightly eliptical orbit.

Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space

Re: fully stocked bar

The reverse works too. I remember talking to a couple from Colorado whilst holidaying in the highlands of Scotland. They kept talking about how thick the air tasted. I still wonder if the scotch was wasted on them.

Re: 5 of Richard Branson's balloon adventures - in his own words

IIRC the rescue services were one of Her (noW His) Majesty's Ships.

I've heard a story that one of the ship's officers made the comment "that's what happens when you put a prick in a balloon". I couldn't possibly comment

Oh, what a feeling: Toyota building robots that get better with practice

Lesson 1 - plug the charger cable in.

Lesson 2 - unplug the charger cable.

and possibly lesson 0 - realise you're 'hungry' and go to the charger station.

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: Recovering lost films from collectors is an interesting subject

and "Sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made"

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

and another for any use of "standard" as a description without qualifiers such as "our standard", "their standard", "our competitor's standard".

Ryanair faces GDPR turbulence over customer ID checks

Well played, but I don't think you can blame Ryanair for the Eyjafjallajökull eruption

Got an idea for dealing with space waste? NASA wants to hear from you

They've even got dustbin lid covers

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

zebra crossing. What about pelican crossing, puffin crossing, toucan crossing or pegasus crossing?

Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board

Re: Cool.

Mine used to ask "are you not stopping?" if we kept our coats on.

icon because it fits

Cards Against Humanity deals SpaceX a $15M lawsuit over Texas turf tangle

only if they send it over to his plaice

On Call’s Greatest Hits, as voted for by you, the readers

Re: Screens

2014 (ish)

Mrs C had to explain to someone why their docking station and big screen wouldn't work without the keyboard thingy (with its own screen) that they had left at home...

Japan to put a small red Swedish house on the Moon

I forgot the punchline

Customer: "Neither, it's for my armpits"

Re: Moonhouse my bottom

but only after he's previously had four smaller green houses there first

"If you can't pronounce Swedish (and nobody expects you to be able to) then just make up your own sounds."

That was a problem I had in my youth when I read the Swedish Deodorant joke(*) in a rag mag(**). Wasn't funny, until somebody read it out to me.

(*) Customer: "I'd like to buy a deodorant". Swedish shopkeeper: "Roll on ball or Aerosol?"

(**) - a collection of (mostly) rude jokes printed on cheap paper and sold by students to raise money

SpaceX aims high with Polaris Dawn mission

and this is why Rocket Science is hard. Lithobrakingly hard.

Do look up! NASA unfurls massive shiny solar sail in orbit

"after months of careful checking – was successfully unfurled"

"The sail will appear as a square about half the size of a tennis court"

Careful checking was to avoid a fault

Mine's the blazer with the Lawn Tennis and Croquet badge on the pocket

If a cheesy '80s flick is a good metaphor for how you run projects, something is wrong

It's a kind of magic (yes, we see what you did there) coz it had Sean Canary playing a Spaniard with a Scottish accent and Christophe(r) Lambert playing a Scot with a French accent.

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

Re: Brad sent "a quite angry email" to [e-mail]

unlike their shipping department

bilge from microsoft.com

"As you look it!"

"As you look at it!", Shirley?

Japan stops measuring train crowding by ease of newspaper readership

Re: Just use the old Japanese one

or the Eric & Ernie "Morning Standard"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX5HCE3CAWs

Re: Lets improve the other metrics first

or

"It's almost as if politicians had no concept of Outside London"

Bugging out: 53 years since humans first drove a battery-powered car on the Moon

@Gene Cash recently posted about wanting to design and 3D print a moon buggy. I (briefly) had a similar thought, based on a memory of an article in a childhood christmas present "Peter Fairley's Space Annual" - still available thanks to t'interwebs favourite tat bazaar.

This link

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/2iYAAOSwz6hl3a0v/s-l960.webp

should show some of the relevant pages in a currently available copy

(full disclosure - I'm not the seller of this item, other copies of the same book are available at lower prices)

NASA pops repair kit in the mail so astronauts can fix leaky ISS telescope

You aren't the first one to want that BL tick:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1581848

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

and if you do ever come back...

then fuck off again.

finished it for you. You're welcome, have one of these -->

Second NHS IT system confirmed to be affected by CrowdStrike issues

"The pharmacy could not process electronic prescriptions made after the outage took hold, but those issued before could still be fulfilled"

Assuming they actually have the items prescribed in stock, which is a whole other chronic failing.