Posts by AlanSh

Windows 11 24H2 now 'broadly available' ... complete with yet another 'known issue'

Where is it?

I've got a PC running 23H2 and I've never seen the invite to upgrade. It's got an Intel 8700 - maybe that's too old?

Build your own antisocial writing rig with DOS and a $2 USB key

Re: Would you like a copy of EasyEdit II?

Thanks for that link. I will investigate. I can't post the source because I use some libraries (e.g. putting overlays into extended memory) which I don't own. So, githib isn't the way, but freedos maybe.

Alan

[edit - I've had a look there, but I can't work out how to add my program.

Would you like a copy of EasyEdit II?

Back in the late 80's and early '90's, I wrote EasyEdit II - a text editor with word processing pretensions. It sold well (kept me in PC's for a few years) but, of course, got taken over by better Windows tools.

I've still got it lying around and, if you wish, you are welcome to add it to your collections. It's here https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/hvqjqcjdrp4xnbye7u5aj/AC3mEeqQwyF1zQhF0bZgX3A?rlkey=2nfmc8hg8z8s1ltp2ky1iy4jx&dl=1 - feel free to download it and play. It includes all documentation, of course.

Have fun

Alan

Privacy warriors whip out GDPR after ChatGPT wrongly accuses dad of child murder

And the fine is

4% of gross turnover I think. That should make them sit up and listen

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Back in the day

I was working at a company in Ipswich who had just got PCs (I was netwkring them). One secretary was using Wordstar but didn't really understand about files or anything. So, anything new, she tacked onto the top of the previous letters and then just printed the first 'x' pages to produce the document in question.

Of course, the file got humumgous and I had the task of explaining that she really needed to create new documents. Not sure it worked but we did have some nice evenings/nights out together

Photoshop FOSS alternative GIMP wakes up from 7-year coma with version 3.0

Humm - really?

I just installed it and it won't load in my Fuji raw files. Not over impressed. Maybe I missed something?

Alan

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

It's working now.

Satnav systems built for Earth used by Blue Ghost lander as it approached the Moon

What3words?

It's time they expanded their horizons.

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

It's not quite fixed

I was one of those who suffered. When it did come back, all my signatures had gone. Of course, I'd stored them on the server.

Yuck!

Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it

I used to love those meetings

As a consultant, I was pulled into daily/weekly meetings to review progress. It always went off topic and never lasted less than 2 hours. Well, I was on a day rate, so the contract got extended more than once - not my fault, as I explained to the customer - you asked for the meetings.

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

It may also be how they are taught

In the olden days, learning assember & the microcode was essential to producing efficient code. For example, Data General Nova's had a "Jump Through" instruction. If you jumped through a certain register, it would pass you to the address in the register and then increment it. Fantasic efficient use of code.

I am sure there are similar 'shortcuts' that the "greybeards" know and use. But anyone new, learning from college courses, probably won't learn about this, produce iniefficient (relatively speaking) code and get disillusioned when their entry is rejected.

So, who is educating the newbies on the best practices for efficiency?

Alan

BOFH: Engage Hollywood Protocol – because nonsense always looks legit

I didn't see that one coming

Brilliant ending.

DeepSeek isn't done yet with OpenAI – image-maker Janus Pro is gunning for DALL-E 3

I tried it

I put in "Can you draw a cartoon of a UK Scout leader standing by a tent". After 30 seconds, I got "Attribute error".

How Windows got to version 3 – an illustrated history

I remember the early multi tasking

The app had total control. If it didn't give it up, it could hog the CPU and no one else could get a look in. Writing Windows apps was fun in those days.

Alan

Mr Intel leaving Intel is not a great sign... for Intel

Re: Newton's 'First'...not just a good idea, but it's the law...

Or to rephrase it:

If nothing much happens, nothing much happens.

Windows 11 24H2 strikes again – Outlook might not start with Google Workspace Sync running

What about PST files?

I use a lot of PST files to store old data. This wasn't in the "New" Outlook when I last tried it. Anyone know if it's there now?

And of course, being an enterprise 365 account, we use shared mailboxes as well.

Alan

Outlook is poor for those still on Windows Mail, Calendar, People apps by end of year

There are alternatives

If you only have one or two email addresses, then EMClient is probably as good as it gets for free alternatives.

Alan

Sysadmin shock as Windows Server 2025 installs itself after update labeling error

Wot? No testing?

Who in their right minds puts windows patches straight onto their production servers? Didn't they have a test plan for these things?

Alan

Linus Torvalds: 90% of AI marketing is hype

I agree

It's like all new technology - eventually it will get embedded in our everyday lives and we won't even notice it.

But the AI companies have to try and monetise it before that happens. Which is why you get all the hype.

Alan

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

My quickest fix

Phone call from the Singapore office (I was in the UK). "The printer has stopped working". "OK, are there any lights on it?" "Yes, a red one". "What does it say underneath that red light?" "Out of paper. Oh! Thank you, goodbye".

Alan

Average North American CISO pay now $565K, mainly thanks to one weird trick

CISO?

Must be somethig unique to the USA - what's CISO?

Alan

Alibaba Cloud waiting for hardware to dry out before trying to restore customer data

water from above?

Was it a rain cloud?

What is this computing industry anyway? The dawning era of 32-bit micros

PCs are in my blood

I've been "into" PCs ever since the first IBM PC with twin floppies. And the Compaq luggable (I had one of the first in the UK). Who remembers replacing the CPU with the NEC chip that ran 20% faster?

I've tinkered with Command.com, done wizard stuff with DOS internals and wrote some pretty good s/w for my company (DEC) when they had PATHworks on VMS and it ran really slow due to following MS restrictions. One of which was that for a .BAT file, command.com opened the file, read the command, closed the file, executed the command, opened the file, found the next line, read it, closed it. Open & close on a VMS system (where networked .BAT files were stored) was very very slow. so, in a networked PATHWorks environment, it could take 10-20 minutes for the clients to execute login commands. I wrote some code and got that 20 minutes down to about 5 seconds, just by keeping the files open.

And yes, my son has had his own PC since he was 6 in 1990. He would play games (Sonic the Headgehog was a favourite) while I coded next to him.

OpenAI co-founder's Safe Superintelligence startup inhales $1B in funding

Re: Alright, boys and girls

I'm happy to be CFO - my background is IT and I don't have an overdraft. Is that enough?

Firefox 130 lands with a yawn, but 131 beta teases a long-awaited feature

Not all of us

"the one we've all been waiting for" ???

I don't think so - I haven't, for one.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

Tea & reminiscence

Tea, the best tea is M&S decaffinated tea. [This may introduce some flaming]. It's smooth, strong tasting and has no caffeine to harm the body.

Onto things one can do with old kits. Back in 1979, we had Data General Nova 3's & Nova 1200's running RDOS - a single user text based system - and twin 5.25" floppies. I managed to get it to run a 2 user database system in Fortran with full screen data display (using assembler to put the data on the screen where it needed to be) and introduced overlays so I could get more code running. I guarenteed access to any data record in less than 1 second - and it did it. [Eat your heart out DBASE & Oracle - I had it first!!!]

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

Back in 1982...

I imported the original Compaq luggable computer from the USA before they set up a UK franchise. I had to change the P/S from 110v to 230 - and guess what, it was just a switch inside the P/S. So, easy peasy. And a lovely machine too - very tough, but heavy. One winter I got stuck and needed to get the the bottom of a hill carrying it in it's nylon case. So, I just sat on it and sledded down the hill. Fun days!

Alan

Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS

Re: Making an arse out of... wait what did you say?

That wouldn't take very long.

Re: Making an arse out of... wait what did you say?

And, fact checking his other statments:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jpn2q76n1o

Google to kill off URL shortener once and for all

I still use them - bit.ly

I use bit.ly for URL shoterting. I've got a local NAS device that I use as a forum host and it's got a very long and unmanageable URL (thank you synology). It;s much easier to type in bit.ly/xxxx for my members.

If it all goes away, then so will my forum

Alan

Porting the Windows 95 Start Menu to NT

Re: NetBEUI

I used Netbeui to create DHCP for DECnet under DOS - unheard of at the time. I loaded the Netbeui stack, connected to a local server (VMS machine running PATHWorks), got a DECnet address, unloaded the NetBeui stack and loaded DECnet. It worked great. Coopers & Lybrand, in London used it.

Shame that everyone moved to TCP/IP soon afterwards.

Alan

Astroscale space janitor attempts fly-around of derelict upper stage

Drones?

I feel sure drones have been doing this for years. Maybe someone should talk to DJI?

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

my message to Your "oncall@register" has triggered your junk email

I tried to send you a story, but all I got back was:

Generating server: AM7P189MB0760.EURP189.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM

[e-mail]

Remote server returned '533 5.4.0 Your message seems to have triggered our junk email filters. Could you edit your message and try again?'

It's just some text. No I am not going to edit it and try again. Fix your process

Alan

The origin of 3D Pipes, Windows' best screensaver

Re: I would love that on my Windows 11 PC

Found some here https://www.screensaversplanet.com/

I would love that on my Windows 11 PC

Is it available as a download?

Alan

Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch cleared of all charges in US Autonomy fraud trial

Good decision

It was always 'buyer beware' in situations like these. HP should never have begun this travesty.

Time for --------->

Hudson Rock yanks report fingering Snowflake employee creds snafu for mega-leak

But...

This assumes that Snowflake employees can see customer DATA rather than just offering a hosting service. If I were a customer there, I would protect my data somehow.

Alan

Miles of optical fiber crafted aboard ISS marks manufacturing first

Space factories - excellent

The first real (to me) achievment from the ISS. Something that is tangible NOW and can be commercialised. [Assuming it works, of course].

NASA solar sail to be Siriusly visible in orbit from Earth

Re: 80 square meters, eh?

No, we have a new unit of measurement:

"roughly six US parking spots"

Alan

MIT breakthrough means there's no material too weird for 3D printing

Well I am glad someone understands this

Because I don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenberg%E2%80%93Marquardt_algorithm

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

I thought it was the right to bare arms

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

I need classic outlook

I don't mind losing POP3, but I need access to the large number of PST files that I archive old mails to.

I haven't tested the new version (I've seen it on another machine and didn't like it) but my existing system runs around 15 email accounts, all nicely segregated and visitble. I don't want something that looks like Outlook on Android.

Bullitt Group had $256 cash in the bank at the end, PWC reveals

That's cheap

"The costs racked up by PWC prior to its appointment as administrator are over £251 alone."

I'll do business with them for that price

Plummer talks to us about spending Microsoft's money on a red Corvette

I had a similar experience

Back in the day, I was working for DEC and also (in my spare time) wrote a nice little text editor called EasyEdit. Because I was in software services and knew some of the developers of DEC DOS products, I made sure it was compatible (so, a decent editor for their email product for example). One day, DEC sold the email product to a client, who knew my s/w and wanted a license for it.

We came to a very amicable (for me) agreement. I didn't need a new car (I had company ones), but it kept me in new PCs for a while.

Alan

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

Re: cool beans!

Mine doesn't. About 1 minute - and half of that is waiting for the Bios to do whatever it does. AMD 9 processor, 64Gb memory and a 4070 graphics card.

Re: It is easy

The third option is to install Open Shell and Explorer Patcher and turn it back to something that is simple and easy to use.

Airbnb sees AI as its ticket to become a sprawling Big Tech giant

How do they carry on?

The full year also produced a net loss, of $4.8 billion on revenue of $9.9 billion

Umm - that's quite a big loss. And in just one year. Will they be around to implement AI?

Alan

AMD bagged more market share in server, desktop, mobile at end of 2023

I can see why

I've been in the market for a decent laptop to do photo editing. I found that the AMD processors were better as all their cores are 'performance' ones and therefore I seem to get more done for a given price point.

I also had one laptop (sent back) where the perfomance cores turned themselves off and everything was running off the slower ones. That was a bit of a shock!

Alan

Windows 11 24H2 is coming so we can all shut up about Windows 12 for another year

Re: Lifetime

It is so easy to fix the taskbar with Explorer Patcher. I have that plus Open Shell and it all works quite nicely.

Alan