Posts by janimal

You’re NOT fired: The story of Amstrad’s amazing CPC 464

er..that was me

I have to admit it, I drew graphs!

The CPC464 was my first computer, but I had been lusting after even the zx80 when I first saw it advertised in an electronics mag. Sadly my parents had divorced & my Mum had to bring up 4 kids on her own with little support at the time from my Dad. Eventually one of my rich friends got given a zx81 (pre-built) we spent a few weeks together typing in programs & then he loaned it to me because I was fascinated with writing my own little programs on it ,whereas he just wanted to play games, but they weren't really up to much. The same thing happened with another friend's Spectrum.

Then one Christmas we got the green screen CPC464. Which must have been the reason we had been eating little more than rice for 6 months while Mum saved up for it!

As someone who has always been hopeless at arithmetic, I found on a computer numbers made much more sense & I finally got to grips with algebra. I spent my time writing programs, which drew graphs from my inputs (just like the faux 3d column graphs in the picture!). I wrote programs to help me learn my times tables, I wrote a stock market game, and the thing I was most proud of was writing a program that displayed a 3D globe (just line drawing) that I could rotate & change the perspective of.

So the CPC 464 turned my simple fascination for giving machines instructions into a dedicated hobby. Eventually I did a BSc in Software Engineering, but not until my late 20's. Now many of the worlds largest companies use software I have worked on. I doubt any of that would have happened without those few years coding on the CPC.

I loved that machine. I'm still crap at arithmetic though.

Connecting Gmail to Google+ is SENSELESS, says Digg founder

Re: Other options

Indeed. I actually have 22 people in my circles. Only three of them ever post anything, and that is once in a blue moon. I am fine with that.

My Dad started to use it occasionally but they kept changing the interface at random & with no warning, which completely scuppered that. He is 80 years old though. He only just coped with all the recent gmail interface changes, I had to give him some coaching mind while he muttered angrily over skype.

Gran Turismo 6: Another glossy, gorgeous Mario Kart on steroids

Re: So, do I buy?

It depends on what you like.. GT5 & GT6 in the single player game are now nothing at all to do with racing.

In GT6 in every career mode race you start from the back of a single file rolling start. You can't go full speed until you cross the line (15 - 30s after the pole sitter) You then have 2 or 3 laps to get past the entire field to win. Fortunately not only are the AI terribly bad, they also have extreme rubber banding. The will slow down by extreme amounts to make sure you can catch up by the last lap.

Basically PD's simulation philosophy only goes as far as the driving physics & even then there are some extremely odd behaviours exhibited, like cars doing nose stands under braking.

Single player mode is probably the worst racing game / sim ever actually made in terms of gameplay.

It's probably alright if you prefer to play online exclusively.

Swollen Reg reader recounts FALSE WIDOW spider HORROR

Re: My thoughts exactly.

looking at your link the spider in the article looks pretty much a total match for steatoda nobilis (in the bottom right corner of the set of four pics) which is exactly the spider in question. The steatoda grossa (a native British spider, also frequently called a false widow as many in the family are, or cupboard spider) has a much more pronounced abdomen like widow spiders.

We had one (S. Nobilis) living in a gap behind a cable run in our bathroom for 3 months this year. You would only see it at night when it would leave the cubby hole & sit in it's almost completely invisible scaffold web on the ceiling above the sink. We didn't bother it & it didn't bother us. It decided to move and one night ran across my foot, while I was sitting in the lounge, on a journey behind the TV.

I have never seen it again despite looking hard in case the cats decided to pick a fight with it. Maybe they already did & it lost?

WATCH LIVE: Comet ISON DESTROYED by Sun, NASA brains fear

You can watch on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q03I1B_yrPg

Xbox One site belly-up in global Microsoft cloud catastrophe

Can we now infer that the GTA:online cloud services are provided by azure too? They have been shit since launch, are guaranteed to fail every weekend and coincidentally many people are reporting time outs, emptying sessions & cloud unavailable issues today and it isn't even the weekend.

I have suspected for a while that MS were providing Rockstar's (abysmal) cloud services. Would someone at El Reg care to investigate (if web journalists do any investigating anymore?)

[edit] Seems they are investigating, but R* don't want to talk, I'll try to reign in my cynicism in future :)

Boffins agree: Yes we have had an atmospheric warming pause

Re: good news everyone

The main problem with doing something about it, is that our society is utterly reliant on plastics, petrochemicals and coal. Our energy 'needs' (I'm positive we don't actually need to use as much as we do) are extreme. With CFC's other coolants / aerosols weren't too difficult to find or replace and the pro-CFC lobby was relatively weak compared to the pro-carbon fuels lobby.

In addition changing from CFCs to alternatives had almost zero impact on the lives of most people. Their deodorants still worked, their fridges still worked.

Sadly energy efficiencies & carbon reduction require a concerted effort that will effect every single human on the planet regardless of whether you live in New York or the slums of Mumbai.

This results in a tendency for people (non climatologists & especially politicians, tax payers and oil companies) to believe in the solution that negatively impacts them the least.

Since these groups also tend to be ones whose opinion carries a lot of weight it is unlikely that anything will change (certainly not quickly) without some catastrophe that can be directly attributed to anthropogenic climate change.

Unsupervised Brit kids are meeting STRANGERS from the INTERNET

This is exacltly why porn filters are bad

I actually wrote to that total idiot Clare Perry about this exact issue.

Porn may possibly do some psychological harm to children if they encounter it online, but that is nothing compared to all the other possible harms on the internet which can result in blackmail or physical harm.

Parents should be left in no doubt that the internet is not a place suitable for unsupervised access by children, not fooled into thinking that because there are no nude pictures allowed through their connection that it is all fairies & ponies.

Beyond: Two Souls - the game that thinks it's a Hollywood blockbuster

Re: Whoever devised quick time events

I remember it well. I always thought of it as a kind of animated Simon Says. I've no idea why me & my friends pumped so much money into that in the pub, oh hang on, we were very drunk!

Microsoft plugs Xbox One consoles into its cloud - what could go wrong?

It's been working so well for GTA:online

oh..wait!

Presumably MS have been watching the literal cluster f*ck that GTA: Online has been. they have monitored the ruined forums containing nothing but "My [insert virtual property of choice here] has gone!" and thought, hmmm yes! this is the gaming experience we want everyone to have!

Windows 8.1: Read this BEFORE updating - especially you, IT admins

Makes me wonder if they are deliberately trying to be the world's premier hate sponge.

Although if they were really serious they could have made it available on floppies only.

Google's latest ad push gives LONE LAWMAKER the creeps

Re: Off by default, perhaps

yes it was the same for me.

Thousands! of! Yahoo! Mail! users! driven! crazy! by! revamp!

Re: Gmail

With gmail, selecting a theme will give you colour back & doesn't appreciably slow anything down. I also find selecting the compact view (if you can find it, they seem to move settings very frequently these days.) means you can get greater info density.

I am seriously considering killing my gmail account, but I know when I delete the 4gb or so of mails I have acquired since 2002 I'm sure some important stuff that I don't even remember exists will go to. I have actually downloaded a back up to a local mail client, but finding anything important in that lot will be a lot harder than a simple search in gmail <sigh>

Honestly the web is so broken these days :/

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

@bongoJoe

In engineering professions they really do care about the mark on your degree. Many CVs are just discarded on that alone. However once you make it to the test phase of the interview process, then the degree doesn't matter.

ha ha please excuse my grammar & spelling errors :/ I blame the surge of rant fueled adrenaline but maybe I deserved the 2.2 after all! ;p

MS Word was partly responsible for me getting a 2.2 instead of a 2.1 :/

I admit it might not have been an issue if I wasn't sailing close to the wire for the hand in deadline for my dissertation. Although that was in part due to an HDD crash & not being quite up to date with my backups.

Anyway... so through out the process of writing my dissertation, every now & then on a completely random basis Word would change the outline levels thus rendering the chapter & page numbering into a semi-random mangled and illogical set of often non-sequential digits. After the 5th time of fixing this pile of pooh I asked the head of our course how such errors might affect the final mark. He stated unequivocally then spelling, grammar and presentation errors would all be treated very harshly & to make sure non existed.

The dissertation has to be professionally printed & bound before being handed in.

On the morning of the hand in date I had to twice go through the ~12,000 word document resetting all the levels & numbering, and eventually left for the printers. On collecting my dissertation an hour after submitting to the binders - a quick check through showed it had once again been randomly re-numbered.

I had to rush tot he library fix it again, back tot he printers, another hour wait. Finally correctly printed & bound I ran to Uni to the submissions office. I was 12 minutes late - this results in an Automatic 'D' for the dissertation, which made up 70% of my final degree score.

A rather crappy week all round that one, the consequences of which have rippled through the rest of my life in several ways.

I don't use Word anymore.

Brit inventor Dyson challenges EU ruling on his hoover's energy efficiency ratings

Re: A can of worms..

We had a Dyson a long time ago. I was so frustrated it's suction power was useless. We had a white cat and a blue carpet in one room. The Dyson never came close to picking up those cat hairs.

The mother in law gave us her Miele. Utterly amazing. It has variable suction power that could actually pick up the carpet on full power. It also has motorised brushes in the cleaning head which pick up the cat hairs instantly.

3rd party bags & filters available on t'internet cheap.

F*ck Dyson

GTA V Online hits speed bumps: Short wait before you can rough up that hooker

Re: Designed for online?

or you could call a taxi on the phone and select skip journey to be at the airfield in 5 seconds or so.

I was of the opinion that if you don't like driving & escaping police, you don't buy GTA as it is pretty much the core gameplay of every version released.

Highways Agency tracks Brits' every move by their mobes: THE TRUTH

Re: Compliance and Annoyance in One Easy Step

"I think it is more a case that he missed the bit where GCHQ can already, quite legally, sink their teeth into all the telecoms data they can eat, so there's really no need to trouble the Highways Agency."

Or indeed Vodafone et al for the raw ID rich data

First rigid airship since the Hindenburg cleared for outdoor flight trials

Re: You can't think of too many uses!?

I suspect he meant economically viable uses.

WAIT! Don't you dare send that ad-spaff email without 'specific' consent

Are you listening Vodafone?

Hopefully you will now accept my monthly opt-out for text messages on a more permanent basis you bastards.

Punter strikes back at cold callers - by charging THEM to call HIM

12 a month!

" Perhaps more importantly, the number of cold calls has dropped off dramatically; he's now down to an enviable dozen a month, down from 30+."

Bloody hell! Does he enter his home phone number into every web based form he can find or something?

We are ex-directory and signed to TPS. Occasionally we get a spate of one or two calls from outside the country - every couple of months though, not on a monthly basis.

I like the idea though.

Xbox One users will have to pay extra for Skype and gamer-gratifying DVR

@Timmay

Timmay you are wrong. Since there are other ways to access that content ie using pretty much every other connected device on the planet, they can't prevent you from accessing them in other ways.

Cable or Satellite channel provision is not at all like the internet. One is a broadcast content delivery system, The other is a (two way) communication network. Just because you can use the internet to also consume content doesn't make them in anyway the same thing.

Re: Centre of the Living Room?

@Timmay

Do try & keep up.

If you want to use online features of the xbox - such as browsing the net, or streaming movies from Netflix (things you are already paying your ISP or Netflix for) you have to pay Microsoft's subscription in order to do so.

Re: Content is King.

@Downside

"Have you tried using Lovefilm on a PS3 without creating a "PS Online" account? No, didn't think you had."

but a PSN account is free

Re: Content is King.

On the other hand, as an infrequent gamer, the sony is still useful for accessing streaming services etc... but xbox requires you to pay a scam tax to MS to access your own internet connection - nice.

Centre of the Living Room?

I thought at launch they annoyed & confused all the gamers by saying that it was not going to be a gaming centric device but more a total media system for the whole family - the centre of the living room etc... etc...

Making people (particularly non-gamers) pay twice for internet access, streaming services & skype doesn't strike me as a very clever way to achieve this? Unless most of their customers are morons of course - which thinking about it isn't an uncommonly held point of view.

Web ad giant (Google) pops Adwords into Maps for iOS and Android

Re: I remember when

@JDX - the manipulation comment was actually referring to Google killing latitude in favour of adding that functionality to g+ now if you want to use those functions you have to sign up for g+ - that is manipulative. However it is also pertinent to the general attitude of most commercial operations these days

@others I should point out that as a biker I have never used any direction aids while riding. There maybe some available for bikers, but I use this thing called a brain to preview my route and then remember it. With the aid of road signs this has worked well in 26 years of riding.

I have to admit though that street view has been very good for actually looking at the key problem junctions of the route on the desktop before leaving. It makes a real difference when you get to the fiddly end of your journey.

I remember when

there were no handy maps available on your phone. It usually involved looking up an address before leaving the house, or asking someone when you arrived in the general vicinity. I hardly ever got lost, the world didn't end, dogs and cats didn't sleep together.

Now that they have disabled latitude, I've decided to screw all this shit and return to those old days.

I'm so,so tired of people trying to manipulate me into their tech eco-system or trying to monetize my every waking fucking move.

Windows 8.1: So it's, er, half-speed ahead for Microsoft's Plan A

@ The Axe

unless you have hundreds of utilities that you don't know the name of. For example on occasion I use a particular tool for repairing a particular file type. I don't know what it is called. I have it stored in a location with similar tools.

Gourmet chemists sniff out ultimate cheese on toast

@AC

well, I tend to trudge up to the top of my street where I can buy locally made Sussex charmer cheddar, and locally made butter from the award winning butchers, pop across the road to the Italian deli for some super thinly sliced pancetta, then next door to the small bakery for some still warm bread. Next door to that I buy some arabica coffee beans from the independent coffee shop

Once back home I crisp the pancetta in the grill along with the fresh bread. only lightly toasting one side. Grate the Sussex charmer mix in pepper & a tiny pinch of salt. Butter the bread, lay on the pancetta. Carefully cover the slices with the cheese leaving no corner of the bread exposed. Add a few dashes of Worcester sauce and grill until bubbling.

If you insist on idiotic generalisations, you should go back to the daily mail.

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

Re: Oh good

or maybe just when you have a limited window of privacy?

Mines the one with the stopwatch in the pocket...

Re: Oh good

Indeed any timeporn has been discussed in my life, I have never heard of any male who didn't have plenty of access to the stuff in their early teens. I was at school in the late 70's early 80's we all had our own porn stashes.

These people seem to think networks are a new thing d'oh!

Anyway my point being, I don't think the % of men who happen to be rapists or peado's is anywhere near the % of men who looked at porn when they were 11 years old (for that is when I found my first hardcore porn mag in the woods!).

We also used to look at them when the paper delivery dropped them off & the newsagents while we were waiting to start our paper rounds.

no internet required.

Oh good

Brilliant! Now parents will feel that it is perfectly safe for their kids to use the internet alone. Awesome news for the groomers out there.

It may or may not be unhealthy for kids of a certain age to see pornography, but it is definitely unhealthy to allow them to communicate with literally anyone in the world without supervision.

Whatever happened to don't talk to strangers eh?

The internet is not a safe place for children to wander alone

Giving parents a false sense of security is just fucking stupid.

Re: That's enough

Most of the porn I got to see at school was from under the beds of friend's parents (mine were very religious, although maybe they just hid the stuff better)

Funnily enough this was usually stuff from Holland which was much more explicit than anything that was allowed in the UK even from licensed sex shops.

All long, long before the internet & mobiles.

Mines the long dirty raincoat....

not only but also

a) The parents now feel safe in the knowledge that their kids can't see porn and so allow them unfettered access to the internet, where they can chat & webcam with kiddy fiddlers to their hearts content. But it's ok, they are safe. They can't look at porn.

b) The kids just change the DNS & carry on as normal.

Microsoft video preview shows Windows 8.1 tablet UI options

Re: @MIc

Except without configuration certain programs throw you back into TIFKAM

In addition - I really like having a start menu. In fact I prefer the XP start menu, because I could organise all my applications by in various ways. That way I could find rarely used utilities which I don't remember the name of by function or domain.

Win7 start menu is pretty shit (for me personally) because just typing often fails to find the item i am looking for, and then I have to scroll through a ridiculously massive flat list.

The point is not everyone's most productive workflow is the same. The way for MS to actually please their customers is to allow maximum configurability without letting the marketing department try and force people down one road.

Can anyone tell me what would be the problem of having a setting that allowed you to choose between the start screen, flat start menu, or hierarchical menu as the primary interaction point of the OS?

@MIc

I currently have windows media center showing channel 4 on my big screen (TV)

on screen 2 I have a browser with my webmail , along with my VPN connection window and the volume control for the midi keyboard.

On screen 1, I have this browser window, another browser window, some sticky notes and explorer open.

since I am watching TV, but occasionally playing the keyboard or reading webpages at the same time I am definitely suing more than one of those at exactly the same time.

but on top of that it is a hell of a lot easier to switch tasks with three screens and no limitation on how many windows I can have open, or where I can place them.

When I am working it is not uncommon to have 16 - 20 individual applications open at once, including VM's and remote desktop sessions & to be referencing, comparing or duplicating content between those windows & applications.

How does win8 handle three large screens? Personally I'm not willing to risk my current well honed workflow to find out.

I think Bob O'Donnell had it right at the end of this article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/05/microsoft_windows_81_demo_computex/

“I think Microsoft and Intel need to come together and focus on the core productivity benefits of PCs and not let them get distracted with trying to be all things to everyone,” he added.

“PCs are still better at many things than tablets and smartphones, but I think that message has been lost and needs to be revived in order to get people focused on the benefits that PCs offer.” ®

BSkyB-owned BE slams into traffic pile-up over 'unlimited' broadband lie

Re: Good company though

I was with Be for many years and happy too. It was the lack of fibre offering that made me switch. We were one of the early locations to get a fibre cab, but BE made no plans to roll out an offering. Eventually I switched to a fibre provider just before they announced the sky buy out.

Very happy with my current provider. I used 250gb in the first week of being connected

However I never answer the 'who did you switch to' question at least not on internet forums, because as soon as you start recommending an ISP, they go downhill!

Microsoft's Windows 8.1 secrets REVEALED ... sort of

Re: Sounds more like 8.01

and still just as awful as 8.0

Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

Agreed

The old lady who lives upstairs and is supplied by the same ISP as I am does not pay the same that I do.

I pay just over double what she pays for unlimited bandwidth.

I definitely don't want cable style packages for my internet connection. That sounds truly horrendous. The internet is much more like a road network than a TV network FFS.

Peak Facebook: British users lose their Liking for Zuck's ad empire

Social Marketing

The secret of successful social marketing is actually really simple.

Produce a quality product that satisfies the customers needs & they will tell all their friends.

or

Produce a crappy product & people will tell their friends.

Windows 8 'sales' barely half as good as Microsoft claims

Bottom Line

I'm sure that the 100m sales figure in no way reflects the number of w8 installs in use. I also think it is a total dogs dinner of an OS designed by marketers @ the finance department.

However, from MS's point of view money has been exchanged for those licenses. What counts for them is that investors see sales & profits. Of course how those sales were achieved and the consumer perception of the product may eventually hurt their bottom line.

The real messages MS are trying to convey here are...

To the investors: We can release a total pile of crap to market & we still get 100m sales!

To the consumers: How can windows 8 be shit when we have managed 100m sales?

Oz shop slaps browsers with $5 just looking fee

Re: Coeliac sufferers are special needs

In the UK / EU the limit used to be under 200ppm could be labelled gluten free, however that definition was changed in 2012 I believe to match the US definition of <20ppm.

However I believe NZ or AUS use <6ppm

just FYI

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

Re: TV Licence

I'm pretty sure if you have the BBC channels disabled on your TV you are no longer liable for the license.

Big Windows updates may ship this summer – and every summer

It sounds ghastly

If they write into stone the idea of yearly updates they will then be under pressure to release something whether they have it or not.

This means arbitrary UI changes or a new colour scheme or some stupid widget that inserts a twitter feed into your word processor or into media player so you can look at baby pictures while you work.

Since stable functionality is often critical in business situations they will need to come up with a system for refusing updates. ooh How about a running task which constantly pops up a full screen providing you a list of cryptic codes for the current updates you haven't installed each with it's own paypal button. Once a day?

Just imagine if this is how they had deployed the metro gui?

Personally I would prefer to choose whether I want to buy into Microsofts flavour of the month, rather than have them foisted up on me or having to jump through hoops to avoid them.

How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it

Re: Spearchucker Jones

Just wanted to say I installed Mint ( version 12 it was) which is based on Ubuntu on an old sony Vaio we have and it installed no problem, no driver issues. Never tried the wireless though - it is cabled to the network.

Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed

Re: Microsoft's conceited arrogance... @Ragarath

>"It seems to me it is the person that is lacking if they cannot work it out. "

That works both ways.

oh and it is visual CUE btw

Sirius Cybernetics Corporation

First against the wall when the revolution comes....

Re: Microsoft's conceited arrogance... @Ragarath

"Why is telling you about it not enough? Is your memory that bad?"

Actually yes - why should I be discriminated against?

"Also why do you expect underlines, colours, animations, boxes etc. to actually do something? Can you tell me why? Yes, that's right! At some point in the past that is what someone decided would work and everyone else learn't it."

And all those thousands of experiments in a field called HCI (Human Computer Interaction) conducted since the mid 1970's.