* Posts by TeeCee

9433 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Multi-billion Euro broadband fund obliterated by EU budget cut

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Facepalm

Had to happen.

Cut the gravy train of fat-arsed bureaucracy or cut the infrastructure investment?

Difficult choice......

Pope resigns months after launching social networking effort

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Alert

The Curse Of Twitter

Claims another victim.....

Ethernet at 40: Its daddy reveals its turbulent youth

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Re: Killing token-ring.

No "cost per MAC", see answer above.

I ran 16meg TR over CAT5[1]. The cable length specs were conservative, to say the least. This only ever failed once. Some contractors moved an office wall and spliced(!) the CAT5 that ran along it. My reactions on finding the splice were unprintable. Suffice to say they revolved around the contractors, their parentage, their uncanny resemblance to various parts of human anatomy and what I'd do to them if I ever got them in a room with a fire axe.

[1] 3com cards and Andrews' MAUs IIRC.

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Re: Ring was too expensive

Er, rubbish. A MAC code is a MAC code, all it has to be is unique. You could assign your own with TR, if you really had nothing better to do with your life, so what they actually were was irrelevant.

The cost was in the intelligence of the cards. Every token-ring node can act as a master (first one on the ring gets it until such time as something you've designated as master turns up and takes it) and also performs diagnostic monitoring on the upstream device, generating alerts if necessary.

Also, the TR protocol has the capability to route between LANs built in, which adds to the complexity. Once a route is established, the end nodes are expected to address that route correctly themselves. The source-routing bridges only supply transport and discovery services.

Ethernet cards were dumb and much cheaper.

Upsides: TR can always tell you exactly where a fault has occurred and usually exactly what the fault is. They'll also tell you exactly what's where and when it appeared there. Finally, adding rings to a network is trivial as it works it all out itself when a new bridge shows up.

Downside: cost.

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WTF?

Killing token-ring.

All well and good, but overlooks one very important point. Ethernet never killed token-ring, IBM did that for them.

The chipset problem was alluded to in the article. The problem here was that if you wanted to use any of the IBM software (e.g. the PC terminal emulators) you had to use cards with the honest-to-god, gen-u-ine IBM TROPIC chipset (that's the big, square metal thing on an IBM card). Nothing else would do. For all other purposes, third-party cards would do just fine.

IBM, in their infinite wisdom, only ever produced "real" IBM cards as 8 bit ISA cards which, from the price, seemed to be assembled from Unicorn vellum laid on an Unobtanium substrate. Eventually they decided to license TROPIC and the result was the excellent (and sensibly priced) 3com Tokenlink III. As usual with IBM, it was too little too late and Ethernet had its feet firmly under the table by then.

I'm afraid that all the alleged FUD was actually, er, true. You only needed four PCs running DOOM and chaingunning the fuck out of each other to prove that 4meg token-ring shat all over Ethernet for throughput under load. TR gave you a usable (if slow) network with that going on, Ethernet cacked itself on the spot. One of TRs best features was that it degraded gracefully under heavy load. 16meg (that's 16, not 12!!) TR just flew in comparison to Ethernet.

Token-ring had diagnostics and redundancy built in, which is why the cards were pricier than their Ethernet counterparts. Yes, it was entirely possible to have the thing give up without your having a clue what had gone wrong, but if you weren't running something with the capability to diagnose and act on beacon frames and you hadn't made that the designated ring controller, it was entirely your fault! The concept of the token "falling out" is actually an old joke. If you do manage to axe the machine that has the token at the time, it's NAUN (Nearest Active Upstream Neighbour) spots the problem and generates a new token containing a beacon frame to advise the ring controller of the change. This happens in milliseconds, not minutes.

There certainly is a load of FUD around all this, but he's the one pushing it!

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Facepalm

Re: Ring was too expensive

Nope, that's good old IBM Type 1, or possibly Type 6, with those unisex plugs on each end. Even the wallports were just bits of plastic that accepted a unisex plug in the back.

UTP came somewhat later to token-ring. Originally everything hooked up using those connectors. Making 'em up was a bitch too. In theory, as they snapped together it should have been simple. No crimping, screwing or any other "ing"s required. In practice, getting all the bits in the right place and keeping them there while snapping the casing together was like juggling six balls while sat on a unicycle.

Illicit phone rings in Sri Lankan inmate's back crack

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Coat

I find it difficult to believe....

....that you managed to write that without once suggesting that the ringtone sounded a bum note.

Curiosity photographs mysterious metal object on Martian rock

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Happy

I recognise that.

I used to have one of those, but the shiny bit that screws on the end fell off and got lost.

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Coat

Next instruction to Curiosity:

"Perform a U-turn, if possible."

Michelin critics to football blogger: Salaud! Unhand that URL

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Happy

Purpose?

"Exactly why Mascall decided to devote the site to repurposed mags featuring Platini's mug is not clear..."

I thought, from the pic, that the message; "Platini is a big girls' blouse" came across loud and clear myself. Have a look around some of the football blog sites devoted to teams that play in the Champions' League. That same message comes across, only without the illustrations.

El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa

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Meh

Weak high quality tea, no milk and no sugar is the future.

Actually I think you'll find it's the past. Stuffing milk and / or sugar into it is a fairly modern thing in the history of tea.

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Bacon sandwich tea.

I'll take Yorkshire tea by preference, but any decent blended tea in a pinch, brewed in a pot, milk, no sugar thanks. And none of this cobblers about number of bags / spoonfuls being dependant on the number of people, it's the size of the pot that's important here. Mine takes four, regardless of how much of it I end up drinking.

I'm also partial to other teas, both with and without milk depending on type, but not as an accompaniment to a bacon butty as that would be sacreligious.

And will the yank trolls trying to push coffee as anything other than a necessary adjunct to code generation please sod off. Coffee is like cough syrup. It does the job it's supposed to, but you can't help being aware that someone's made a real effort with the flavour to put you off drinking it in quantity.

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

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Facepalm

How to improve the world.

1) Build a very large asylum.

2) Ask Christians; "Do you really believe any of the rabid, ficticious waffle in the Book of Revelations?"

3) Anyone who answers "yes" gets a rubber room all to themselves.

There are probably quite a few other bits that should be taken with a pinch of salt, but anyone who actually believes that bollocks really is away with the fairies and should be forced to have others do their thinking for them.

British games company says it owns the idea of space marines

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Meh

Values.

Amongst our values are Honesty, Courage, Humility and Litigious Bastardry.

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Meh

Re: Marines?

Were any of them called Kevin?

The Register Android App

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Facepalm

Font size.

Having an adjustable font size for reading - 10/10

Not having that adjustment apply to the text in the article list, so you still can't see which article you'd like to read - 0/10

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Coat

Re: "And the rest"

I didn't know there was such a thing linguistically as a "royal us" until now.....

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Re: Also ..

At least you're quite safe saying that. Anyone pissed off enough to want to give you a kicking won't be able to find you.

Don't Menshn the snore: Chick-lit queen's jabber site killed in its sleep

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Facepalm

Oh noes!

Where will all teh tumbleweeds go nows?

Speedy MySQL 5.6 takes aim at NoSQL, MariaDB

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Devil

Explanation.

"Oracle inexplicably changed the file structure of the MySQL code base..."

Ok, got that.

"...so that merging all of the existing MariaDB code with the MySQL 5.6 file tree would be 'a very time consuming job.'"

That sounds like the reason to me. Oracle don't want their hard work ported straight into the competition. It's sort of like Open Source, only with significant amounts of added evil.

Microsoft techies bust data centres, pull plug on Bamital botnet

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"The crack unit..."

To avoid confusion we'd better start referring to the Win 8 UI design team as "The LSD and Ketamine cocktail unit" then.

Study: Gay marriage support linked to pr0n consumption

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Meh

Re: Lies, Damn lies, and... well ,you know the rest...

Perhaps surprisingly, there is actually a well established correlation between intelligence and libido.

I suppose this means that Viagra could be a study aid? Then again, taking an exam while afflicted with a monumental boner is bound to be rather uncomfortable and distracting, so it may be a zero-sum game.

What happened to the link to the Hardware site?

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Already noticed there wasn't one.

I think that the real problem here is that the layout we all know, with the bar at the bottom containing the comment counts and links to the seperate comment area, would have "This article has comments disabled" (or something like that) in place of the comments link. That indication is lacking in this layout.

Kickstarter project says open source can blast Death Star costs

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Trollface

So the smart trolling move is to wait until March 31st, pledge the remaining balance and watch them all crap themselves then?

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Happy

Re: Open source death star?

"Sister, SISTER"

Presumably that's why he had it in strikeout. A reference to all the bandwagon jumping spinoffs written after the first film that ended up with egg on their faces (and in rather dubious legal territory in many jurisdictions).

I still reckon that George did it deliberately. Enough bait to get people to jump to the wrong conclusions followed up with a massive bitchslap to the freeloaders.

Astronomers unravel solar system's strange energy 'ribbon'

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Unwanted and pointless ribbon around solar system!

Microsoft deny responsibility.

Jammy b*stards: Admen flog chocolate bars with 'Wi-Fi-free' zones

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Re: Blocking wi-fi legally...

..with poor shielding..

Or just stick a bit of duct tape over the door switch and leave it open. Far more effective. Of course when you sit down to enjoy your chocolate in peace you'll find it's a molten mess in your pocket and you may find that having hard-boiled bollocks is a tad disconcerting......

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Unhappy

Re: Whatever.

That would be illegal!

Yes, but it bloody well shouldn't be. You want to make a phone call? Leave the auditorium and go stand in the bloody foyer. If your availability is so important to the world that you cannot be out of contact for the duration of the film, what the fuck are you doing at the pictures in the first place?

I don't think that shooting the bastards is legal either. More's the pity.

The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder

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Alert

"The ships will be there for 50 years or more, visibly cruising around....."

I suspect they'll be spending much of that time invisibly drifting around to save fuel and er, costs.

IIRC much of the Navy spends its time with the engines off, when out of sight of prying eyes, for cost reasons. One is forced to wonder whether the cost savings associated with going non-nuclear actually become a net loss over the lifespan of the ship when fuel costs over that lifespan are factored in.

Especially if you make a realistic assessment of what fossil fuels or synthetic equivalents are likely to cost in 30+ years' time.....(!)

Microsoft 'touches 16k shop workers' to flog Windows 8 hard

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Re: "Confusing software and expensive hardware doesn't sell" shocker

Also: "People don't want fingermarks smeared all over their screen shocker."

Ever tried a full-fat touch machine? Worse than useless as anything more than a very unwieldy and hugely overpriced tablet. You'll need a bottle of cleaner and a microfibre cloth to hand and use them regularly for any serious use. MS need to get those gesture sensors they're working on to market ASAP, or they're screwed.

BIS, bash, bosh: El Reg solves BlackBerry 10 email bafflement

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So they're over the RIM?

Presumably now sliding down the bowl and picking up speed on their way to the U-bend.

Socket to 'em: It's the HomeGrid vs HomePlug powerline prizefight

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Meh

MIMO over Earth.

That'll go down like a lead balloon in much of Europe.

In many countries, even fairly recent build houses commonly have two pin sockets. Those sockets that do offer an earth connection are often earthed to the nearest available water pipe or to a ground pin immediatly outside the nearest exterior wall, rather than there being a contiguous earth circuit around the house.

US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' ... it might spark TRADE WAR

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Mushroom

Yeah......right.......

So in fact very similar to that Sarbanes-Oxley kneejerk bollocks which means that, because corporate America is as bent as a three-bob note, anyone anywhere in the world with a connection to the financial reporting side of a company with a US presence falls under its aegis.

Sort that pile of horseshit out and we'll talk.

While you're at it, you could think about amending that Constitution to recognise a few important things that have happened in the last 30 years or so. Ramming your head so far up your own arse that you can't see the problem isn't a long-term solution.

We need a "Sod off you two-faced git" icon.

HP jumps on Chromebook bandwagon with 14-incher

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WTF?

"..at $329.99 "

Meanwhile, with a bit of shopping around, you can easily get a shiny new similarly sized laptop with a dual core Celeron clocking rather faster and with significantly more storage for around that price.

Also, that'll work when it's not connected to Google, unless you're daft enough to put ChromeOS on it. Why would anyone buy this?

Brit boffins GANG-RESEARCH tiny LEDs for 1Gbps network

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Facepalm

...and now the world is filling up with cars with over-bright daylight running lights!

Cars have a problem all of their own. The rules around lighting were defined in the mid '70s and stipulate the maximum wattage of the lights used.

Thus we have ended up in a situation where HID and LED lamps capable of figuratively boiling your eyeballs in their sockets are perfectly legal, while swapping your conventional 55/65w dip/main Halogen bulbs for a set of 70/100w ones isn't on a vehicle manufactured after 1976. Even though they're not as bright as the newer, more efficient, technologies operating at legal wattages.

There is a small sop to common sense in that HIDs are obliged to be self-levelling. Unfortunately, as roads tend not to be as smooth as a baby's bum and self-levelling systems are reactive and take a few moments to adjust, all this actually does is swap "continuous dazzle" for "photographic flashgun".

Report: Over 1.5 million UK drivers will have hydrogen cars by 2030

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Facepalm

Key assumption:

Nobody cracks the "fast charge" problem for batteries between now and 2030, which would render the whole Hydrogen thing moot overnight.

Elephant in the room: The military want batteries, which can be charged from any power source, rather than a rebadge of their existing fuel logistics problems. Guess where most of the serious R&D budget comes from these days?

BANG and the server's gone: Man gets 8 months for destroying work computers

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Mushroom

By using Cillit you avoid the possibility that the servers end up looking suspiciously clean, giving the game away.

That'll be how he got away with it for 3 years, by using the only marketed cleaning product that's incapable of removing dirt from a smooth surface. FFS, you can impair the cleaning properties of a damp rag by spraying it with Cillit.

Oracle blocks security hole with quick, hot 'n' premature Java update

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Re: If Java were a boat

Yes, but your Java boat could sink in any ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, brook or pond anywhere in the world.

Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

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Postulate: 3D printers are to techies as designer shoes are to women.

Discuss.

Sea Launch comsat rocket goes titsup 40 seconds into launch

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Joke

Re: Elon is only slightly better.

"Hmm... why not use a cat's brain in a vat?"

"Right, really complicated bit for orbital insertion now. Concentrate.......concentrate.........OH LOOK! A PIECE OF STRING!!!!!!!!!!"

<Kaboom>

WORLD temporarily FREED from BURDEN of TWITTER!

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Meh

Re: News

To be fair, it's Sky News that identifies all its presenters by their Tw@ter ID and sometimes changes the ticker at the bottom of the screen to display the latest (ir)relevant twitterings on the article under discussion.

<Grebulons>

Ruuuupert!

</Grebulons>

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Re: As the Depeche Mode boys would say...

Your own, personal, Jesus phone?

'Silent but deadly' Java security update breaks legacy apps - dev

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Poor analogy?

What would happen if Microsoft automatically removed .NET version 3 when the user installed a security update to .NET version 4?

I suppose that various .NET applications would become unstable or fail completely but, as that's expected behaviour for .NET applications, that's no big deal.

I watched Excel meet 1-2-3, and beat it fair and square

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Re: FoxPro!

As I said, the drawback was that if you thumped the "close" box (red "X") on a Fox app window, it left the old skool DOS engine sat in the background, twiddling its thumbs and waiting for input that would never come. Insult heaped upon injury was that you couldn't disable the close box as the OS put that in.

I remember doing a training course in which this was pointed out and demonstrated. I noticed that one of the MS demo apps actually shut down gracefully when this was done. The trainer opened the thing to look at the code and swore long and hard. There was a code block helpfully commented to say that it was handling the graceful close........which was both nigh-on rocket science and on a par for size with the rest of the application.

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"They were focusing their efforts on an OS/2 version of 1-2-3;"

That'll be the one.

They shipped it and by all accounts it was jolly good. Shame nobody bought it, but Lotus had built their empire courtesy of the IBM PC and took the IBM line on what was the GUI OS of the future......oops.

It didn't help that running 123v3 (the three-dimesional one) for DOS under Windows was a right, royal PITA as 123s internal extended memory manager for accessing memory above 640k (thanks Bill!) refused to play nice with Windows. Canning your Windows session and dropping to DOS was the only approach, if not having the whole shebang hang like a professional twatdangler at the drop of a hat was anywhere near important to you.

Moving to Excel meant being able to use a spreadsheet without having to close everything else down first.

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Re: paradigm shift

Er, Foxbase got bought by MS. Hung around for a while with a GUI tacked on. One unfortunate feature was that hitting the "Close Window" icon while in the Fox Read Cycle left the thing hung like a dog and it was reboot time(!)

The engine ended up as the JET engine in Access, which is why MS bought the thing in the first place.

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

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Meh

Re: Perspective

An obvious point here is that, if cacked firmware permanently screws the device, what happens when the thing glitches in the midst of a firmware update?

As I said, if it's updateable at all in software, a recovery process for when that inevitably goes titsup is a must have.

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WTF?

Come again?

"A kernel driver........crashes....giving them the dreaded black screen of no activity whatsoever."

Shit happens.

"...the firmware.......refuses to start up the laptop..."

Shit happens.

"....effectively ruining the product." / "...destroyed two motherboards...."

This is the sort of shit that should never happen. Crapping on the firmware I can sort of understand, but having that as even a possibility in software and not having a recovery process for it? What a shite product!

RIM ends Reg headline pun filth (and launches two new phones)

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Re: After ditching RIM they were going to call themselves SpitRoast...

I hear they're collaborating with LG and E-ten on their next device.

The Blackberry Chocolate Starfiish.

Greedy Apple told it can't triple Samsung's $1bn patent payout

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WTF?

Funny, my tablet has a "finger touch screen" and it's not an Apple or a Samsung product.

Just maybe having a touch screen is a generic feature of the form factor.......?