Posts by Skiron

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

New monitor?

Soon you wil need a 100" monitor to be able to do anything.

Software upgrades help Mars helicopter keep flying

Great work

This is better than some of the low end ones you can try and fly on Earth!

Linus Torvalds ponders limits of automation as kernel release delayed

Re: Automated Testing

The automatic testing is human thing. I expect the kernel devs are one of the best in this area, but after a while it becomes 'normal' and relied on without a thought.

Mary Coombs, first woman commercial programmer, dies at 93

Re: Paper tape at first.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

All punch cards at first.

I'll have a beer for the Lady - and well done Lyons for recruiting on ability and not the boys club.

RIP.

Reg reader rages over Virgin Media's email password policy

TP-Link print server

I bought the above item a few years ago and set it all up with a 12 alphanumeric password, and rebooted. Went back to loign and "password incorrect". Eh? Had to reset it and start all over again being extra careful.

This went on for about 2 hours. Finally I gave up and used a bog standard 8 letter word.

That worked. Curious, I experimented and finally found out that max length was 10. It accepted my 12 length password but lopped of the last 2 chars!

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

Re: 1980s

I forgot the Lynx.

Re: 1980s

And Dragon.

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Re: Skill and experience

Yes, indeed - you have to test (and think of/make up) the most unlikely things a user gets up to - usually non logical and against any grain of "common sense".

Always...

...a salesman. Them people with a computer are a PITA.

'Hundreds of computers' in Ukraine hit with wiper malware as conflict continues

I think...

The game 'RISK' needs a 21st Century update pretty quick.

Cisco warns firewall customers of four-day window for urgent updates

Link here

https://status.umbrella.com/#/

I use the Cisco opendns family shield IP's on all devices on my home network - bloody good it is too.

Escape from The National Museum of Computing

Re: BBC micro

No, it really was a basic course - designed for people that had never seen a computer, let alone turn it on.

BBC micro

That sounds really good, but I'll be stumped on the Beeb - I was a Spectrum 48K boy (ended up programming in Zaks Z80 - all forgotten now). I only used a Beeb twice - 1) was a 12 week computer course my dear old Mum bought for me on my 23rd birthday, and all that really went through was the basic programming and structures of BASIC programming - I didn't have the heart to tell my Mum I had already taught myself all of it on the Speccy and I didn't learn a thing.

The second was one Xmas when I borrowed my Mates as he was going away and I played Elite for about 18 hours non-stop over Xmas day night and most of Boxing day - I done a big drug run, and after what seemed like days the Police gradually stopped attacking me where ever I went, so ended up with a better ship/weapons/add-ons etc. - never did make 'Elite' though :-(

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Users!

In my IT job over 12 years, a lot of the users were a bit clueless, and for some reason a lot of them used MS Word 'open' file dialogue to browse/search for files.

Of course, the file naming convention was just a stupid - a lot of word/excel names were the same, so all the files looked the same.

Enter the guessing game. The amount of times they opened excel files in word, and now the checkmate - the first thing they did was SAVE IT!

In the end my boss told me to ignore any request to restore these files.

Red Hat signals Intel's software-defined silicon will debut in Linux 5.18

Reviewing the unknown

"(Intel didn't said)...but maintained silence on its full capabilities, said nothing about what processors it would work with, and even suggested it might not be related to a real product."

So hell the how can the Linux devs review this to include it? Will the source code have all the details in the Git headers/comments?

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

Teenagers

I expect the average 15 y.o. teenageris more tech savvy than their parents, and will get around this easily - not that some parents don't give a shit about their kids anyway on the Internet anyway.

Plus it will become a challenge for the teens to do so anyway.

Hello Slackware, our old friend: Veteran Linux distribution releases version 15.0 at last

2003 here!

I first ran Mandrake Linux on a spare 486 I had, and it ran lovely. I had heard about Slackware so I bought a new hard disk to swap out with the main Windows drive I was running and tried it on that (scared of messing up Windows). After 6 months of using it I realised I hadn't put the Windows drive back in in for ages, so thought 'bollocks' and used the used that disc as a slave HDB drive for Slackware.

I have since been running it on my two old laptop and also have 2 Pi's running Slackware. - that's 19 years and still the best! Also so easy to build your own kernels.

Best distro ever! I will be updating my laptop's when the Wife's at work later this week.

Slackware on the Pi:

https://sarpi.penthux.net/

That's a signature move: How $320m in Ether was stolen from crypto biz Wormhole

Heinz 57?

Reading that, HOW many more of these "bitcoins" variants are there? No wonder energy prices are going through the roof.

The bloke who invented it all should be shot.

Second Trojan asteroid confirmed to be leading our planet around the Sun

Re: BBQ

I think it was a Bill Bryson book I read it in.

Re: BBQ

"1.18 Km of carbon would make a hell of a barbeque."

I doubt it. I read somewhere once that if the sun was made of coal it would last 3 weeks.

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

"...actions of the pedestrian when he give you an upper cut".

There, FTFY.

What they need to do is get the bloody things to only do a max speed of, say, 10MPH. Some I see must hit > 20MPH on the PAVEMENT!

Something 4,000 light years away emitted strange radio bursts. This is where we talk to scientists for actual info

Wow!

Linux distros haunted by Polkit-geist for 12+ years: Bug grants root access to any user

Re: Eyes

Yes, and to be honest, who will be affected by this? I doubt any business allows any old user to connect to a Linux terminal, and even if they did that person still has to have the knowledge to manipulate it to get root.

Polkit

This is another RedHat thing that got foisted on to everybody else, isn't it?

IBM finally finds a private equiteer willing to purchase Watson Health

Lets see...

...if they can make a robot spell "labour" correctly.

You might want to consider the cost of not upgrading legacy tech, UK's Department for Work and Pensions told

CSP

I dunno if it's all run by the same system[s] but...

When I optioned to pull in my pensions at 55 (7 years ago), my 2nd P45 from Civil Service Pension had my name and address correct with the right telephone contact/numbers, BUT somebody else's NI number and payment details (and there was no way our address and names could be mistaken for each other)!

After a lengthy phone call to them (it took ages to explain to the girl what I was on about) I received an updated P45 about 3 months later. This time all was correct on the headers, including my NI number but it still had the other person's payment details!

Another lengthy phone call.

Sixish months later another P45 arived with the other persons details BUT my payment details... dear god.

Finally after, what 13 months, they finally got it right.

What a mess.

Scam, pyramid scheme, environmental disaster: Vivaldi boss shares his thoughts on crypto-coins

Dead right.

I think he has it spot on. Also, what's with this craze of bundling miners in programs all of a sudden? If people want to mine install a dedicated program.

Open source maintainer threatens to throw in the towel if companies won't ante up

'CFO's

Well, I was sysadmin/network administrator the Company required an IT help-desk system and a change request logging system which we really never had.

Among the plethora of 'solutions' out there, all costing 1000's of £ to buy, then the yearly maintenance licence, I found a FOSS system that combined both systems coded in PHP running on Apache. I installed it and messed around for a bit and as it was open source I easily fixed a few issues and adapted it to suit our exact requirements. All of which I submitted back as patches to the users/bug forums.

After a year or so of using this, in which all Dept.'s got on well with and as stated suited our exact requirements to a tee (for audits etc.) after my tweaks and fixes, I asked my boss, the CFO, if the Company would donate £200.00 or so to the developers, as they saved up 1000's of £ for us and also I could change/fix anything to suit what we required on the functionality.

He refused on the ground that as it was 'free' there was no Company value/assest or depreciate to record so therefore so there was naff all on the accounts sheet. No matter which way I approached it, he point blank refused.

Luckily the my Company shut down a few years after that.

Ransomware puts New Mexico prison in lockdown: Cameras, doors go offline

Idea!

They will have to let all the convicts free on condition they raise/acquire all the money and hand it over to pay the demand!

North Korea says it's launched a third hypersonic missile, this time reaching Mach 10

Interesting that NK has the talent and resources to get something to Mach 10

So they say... they also haven't had any Covid-19 cases, either.

What begins with a 'B' and is having problems at tsoHost? Hopefully not your website

ing

Shame loody ing is'n't hosted on it.

Google: We disagree with Sonos patent ruling so much, we've changed our code to avoid infringement

Re: Real Class

Or do what Microsoft did (or rather didn't) - tell the Linux kernel crew that they have MS's intellectual code in the kernel but wouldn't tell them what it was so they could change it!

Time to party like it's 2002: Acura and Honda car clocks knocked back 20 years by bug

Re: And Furuno!

This note from that page made me laugh:

3. If you want to return the date data to normal for the models with * (asterisk), you can replace the GPS receiver inside the device or update the software (both for a fee).

Re: 2009 Civic

If it was the CMOS battery you could have put it correct manually after starting each time - or can't you even do that?

Re: Customer disservice...

I don't understand that comment from Honda at all.

Why 8 months (after 243 days)? That doesn't sort of fit any time related maths - maybe after 6 months, or if it was a leap year after Feb. 29th, yea, but after 7 months ?

Bork ends where it began. At McDonald's, home of the finest bork product

Re: Blessing

Is that from people that have already eaten there buying a drink after their big mac?

A moment of tension as the James Webb Space Telescope stretches sunshield on way to L2 destination

Re: Real time status

Try reading the comments first...

Where is it? Check this...

I watched the live launch (shame about the clouds!) and been watching the tracking/activity page since:

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

Bloody interesting. At one stage once leaving Earth orbit it was doing nigh on 1 mile per second! It has been slowing down ever since due to the drag of Earths (and the Sun/moon I suppose) gravity, all calculated so that is at a slower optimum speed to allow a precise velocity/position to get it into L*2 orbit.

The maths is amazing to work that out what with including the Ariane launch and what not...

You wood not believe what a Japanese logging company and university want to use to build a small satellite

Oh dear

When it fails, will they confess what wooden work correctly?

France loves open source so much, even its cinema borks have Linux behind the scenes

Re: surprised ?

IT is full of english terms...

Surely you mean 'American English'. It took me months to remember to spell 'colour' color when learning HTML in the '90's. I still do sometimes.

A kitchen splashbork on sale at the Cardiff IKEA

Re: Biggest problem with PIs

The top end SanDusk SDcards work great - I renewed all my Pi's to use them, and no issues over the last 4 years at all. You have to pay that little bit more, though. The cheap[est] ones last about 6 months.

Oh dear!

Bloody systemd in charge.

Yule goat's five-year flame-free streak ends ignominiously

Where was...

Edward Woodward?

New submarine cable to link Japan, Europe, through famed Northwest Passage

Will Huawei be involved? The Yanks won't like that!

UK National Crime Agency finds 225 million previously unexposed passwords

Trust

I dunno if I trust typing one of my many passwords on that site to check it...

US Commerce Dept says China has brain-control weaponry

Re: Aren’t most weapons brain controlled…

I read a sort sci-fi years ago (I expect from my great collection of 'Pan book[s] of horror stories' which, alas, have been lost in the mists of time) in which all the top military bods in the USA gathered together all their top scientists for a secret meeting.

They showed them a grainy B&W cine film smuggled out of the USSR showing the Russians using and flying an anti-gravity machine. They gave the scientists 6 months to build one.

The scientists, now convinced such a contraption is possible, managed to build such a machine after a lot of head scratching, leaps of faith and downright brilliant engineering after 5 months.

At the wash-up meeting, the top bods were delighted and went around all slapping themselves on the back - they then revealed to the scientists that the cine film was FAKE and no such machine ever existed, but NOW the USA had one up on the dreaded Ruskies!

So, who knows what the USA propaganda machine is up to...

Gnu Nano releases version 6.0 of text editor, can now hide UI frippery

Re: Humor has its funny side.

It actually stands for "Funny, but vi is too hard".

(*) Idea from the 'fortune "Ubuntu is a South African word which means 'Slackware is too hard.' "