* Posts by mark adrian bell

38 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2008

Tandy 102 proto-laptop still alive and beeping after 30 years, complete with AA batteries

mark adrian bell

TRS-80 Model 100

I did my first university degree (English literature) on one of these. Great keyboard and persistent memory, but backing up documents to cassette tape : oh noes!

Eventually I learned to connect it to the university physics department through an acoustic modem and got my first email account. Also the first time I accessed a Unix system. University of Toronto, maybe 1990.

Fly to Africa. Survive helicopter death flight to oil rig. Do no work for three weeks. Repeat

mark adrian bell

Re : Excess baggage.

Reminds me of the English language text books that I used to carry on flights into Phnom Penh in the 90s.

Twin Adam Sandlers shake El Reg's movie unwatchablathon team

mark adrian bell
Pint

It's not the quantity that's important, it's whether you can stop, both that day and in following days.

Brit boffins build projectile-vomiting robot to kill norovirus

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Novovirus is no laughing matter.

As Nigel11 points out, the elderly are particularly vulnerable to Novovirus, and it spreads very, very quickly through vulnerable populations in hospital or aged care facilities. I've seen hospital wards have to be strictly quarantined over a Novovirus outbreak. That means that people who need care have to wait while all available resources go into fighting the outbreak and looking after the sick before they get too dehydrated. And it's not glamorous work.

Scientists provide a measure of uncertainty

mark adrian bell
Joke

One time Hieseberg was cruising down the highway in his Cadillac Eldorado when a patrolman pulls him over. The cop says "Dr. Heisenberg, do you have any idea how fast you were going?" He replies, "No, but I know exactly where I am!"

AWS adds some CORS blimey to S3

mark adrian bell
Pint

In my industry...

AWS stands for Alcohol Withdrawal Scale.

- (nurse) mark

HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultrabook

mark adrian bell
WTF?

It has an SSD and it boots in 35 seconds?

My Asus laptop also has an SSD and it boots from cold to log-in in 5 seconds. Of course, I run Arch Linux. :-)

Basic instinct: how we used to code

mark adrian bell

Basic Computer Games

Oh how I loved Basic Computer Games on my TRS-80 Model 1. My first TRS-80 came with 4k of RAM. Yes, that's 4x1024 bytes. When we upgraded to 16k, we thought was more RAM than anyone could ever need.

So what's the worst movie NEVER made?

mark adrian bell
Meh

skewed

These polls are highly skewed by what kind of viewer responds. For example, I saw 'The Room' with a bunch of rabid fans and even tho it's the worst movie I've ever seen, I laughed until I cried. What a great experience! I wish I'd dressed in red cocktail outfit and brought an American football to toss around between scenes. On the other hand, wild horses could not drag me into a cinema to see Twilight: Waking Dawn or any film by Michael Bey.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

mark adrian bell
Happy

The Room by Tommy Wiseau

If you haven't seen it, see it with a group. Mind blowingly incompetent film making, but I laughed until I cried.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

mark adrian bell

The Room by Tommy Wiseau

But I laughed until I cried. Unforgettable.

More evidence that neutrinos are NOT faster than light

mark adrian bell
Joke

The bartender says, "Sorry, but faster than light travel is not allowed in here."

A neutrino walks into a bar.

NASA probe now closer than ANY OTHER spacecraft to Pluto

mark adrian bell
Alien

In the immortal words of Mork from Ork,

Don't go there: It's a Mickey Mouse planet.

Ubuntu republic riven by damaging civil wars

mark adrian bell
Linux

I'm a big Ubuntu fan, but I have to confess I've made the move to Arch. I'll try out the new desktops when they're stable.

Psychology graduates remain poor for life, study shows

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Oh dear...

I guess they forgot to include any NURSING graduates in their survey. Not smart enough to do a "hard discipline"? Come do some nursing work with me. I'll show you a hard discipline. Psychologists don't get paid less because their discipline is "soft". They get paid less because the people who they help are easiest to forget.

Ten... fantasy swords you wish you owned

mark adrian bell

Stormbringer

Along with the above posters, I vote for Elric's infamous black blade, Stormbringer. Elric and Stormbringer were created by the great British fantasy writer, Michael Moorecock. And after going on 30 years, where is my Elric movie?

http://www.stormbringer.net/images/elric/elric11.jpg

HP gives Lou Reed a right shoeing

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

That...

is appalling. God help me if I ever buy another HP product as long as I live.

Becks offloads Posh Porsche on eBay

mark adrian bell
Happy

Joke

So this blonde college student answers an add for part time work. She shows up at the house and the old guy there offers her $50 to paint his porch. She agrees and goes off with her big paint can and brush. The old guy's wife says, "That was a bit unfair. Our porch goes all the way around the house. It's a big job and you only offered her $50." He replies, "Well, I'm not forcing her to do it." A few minutes later the girl comes back and says, "OK, Mister, it's done, but I'm a bit confused. I'm pretty sure that's not a Porshe. I think it's a Ferrari."

One third of Brits are gamers

mark adrian bell
Paris Hilton

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Oh dear. Someone find me a good quote about decadence, decline and collapse. Paris because I bet she doesn't have time to play Farmville.

Microsoft unveils – wait for it – another mobile OS

mark adrian bell
Gates Halo

no one ever got fired

Scoff if you want at the un-coolness of these Steve Balmer efforts when compared to Apple and their shiny iOS, but at Walmart and the other kinds of companies that he wants to sell to, no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

Mystery fungus smacks Afghan opium poppies

mark adrian bell

Tariffs

The good thing about Opium for Afghanistan is there is no tariff on it when they export it to the EU and USA. I bet they'd love to export other crops but subsidies and tariffs make them noncompetitive.

Lost mental hospital memory stick had health records

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Makes me mad too.

So people who are already some of the most vulnerable people in society, who are are already afraid to seek help because of the stigmatization that might lead to, now they have to worry that their medical records might become public. How utterly horrid.

ISS gets bay window onto Earth

mark adrian bell
Thumb Up

From a different film

Now they need an android named Ash to look out of it.

NHS hospitals struggle to hold back the malware tide

mark adrian bell
FAIL

@fifth_column

I'm afraid that when you need information on your patient, and your antiquated computers are all busy churning through their daily virus scan with their obviously outdated AV program, you cancel the virus scan. If the scan was scheduled for 0300 instead of 1730, it wouldn't get canceled quite so often. It astonishes me that most employees don't know how to send an email attachment, but they all know how to use ebay of facebook. I'm terrified that anyone can plug a usb drive into any computer in any department and upload or download anything they want. It revolts me that anyone who knows my name can search my medical admission history, blood results, etc from any computer in the system. We have an application that delivers blood test results that is obviously unix based. Lightning fast and it never crashes. We have a new system for tracking patients across hospitals in the local area based on.... wait for it... microsoft access. (I don't work for the NHS, I work in Australia.)

Olympus shows off lens-swapping 'Pen' camera

mark adrian bell

Holy sticker-shock, Batman!

I saw these at a camera show on the weekend. Full details are here, and yes, you can have an optical view finder:

http://pen.olympus.com.au/

But AUD $1499 for the body and a single focus lens?!

Brits can't tell their heart from their elbow

mark adrian bell

Diagram 2

I disagree. They're obviously his ovaries.

Any uses for an old Mac G4?

mark adrian bell
Linux

Linux

I'd put Yellow Dog or Debian Linux on it. With a light desktop like XFCE or WindowMaker, it should run well.

Acer: Android netbook coming in Q3

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

who wants to sell cheap netbooks?

<quote> We can certainly see companies like Acer releasing Android netbooks to test the level of demand, but we're not convinced they're going to be hugely successful unless they manage to offer a battery life well in excess of what Atom-based XP machines offer today.

But that demand will come in spite of Android, not because of it. Ditto if it sells by the bucketload because it's cheap, which was why the original 7in, Linux-only Eee PC did so well. </quote>

But which company wants to sell at the cheap end of the netbook market? All the netbooks that I see in stores now are AUD $100 more than what I payed for my pre-Atom Eeepc 900. I guess the profit margins are higher on the more expensive netbooks.

eBay driving world's tomb raiders out of business, says prof

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Positive development

This is a wonderful development. Not only can local craftspeople make a living by forging rather than searching for whatever is left to loot, they can replace their own real antiquities (all the good stuff was nicked long ago) with high quality fakes at a reasonable price. Alas, it won't help to patch up all the butchered statues that I saw in Cambodia. [http://www.autoriteapsara.org/en/apsara/about_apsara/police/looting.html]

LG eyes up comfy viewing monitors

mark adrian bell
Black Helicopters

The International Commission on Illumination

Aren't they based in Bavaria?

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie

mark adrian bell
Happy

Thanks, Ted!

"Perhaps that's why the only Web 2.0 companies still left alive are communication tools, and not apps useful outside of your lunch hour."

Oh Ted, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Acer intros 10in Aspire One netbook

mark adrian bell
Coat

too big too heavy

I'll keep my 990g Eeepc 900, thanks. 7 hour battery life? Who wants to spend 7 hours at a time working on a netbook anyway?

Yes that is an Eeepc in my pocket and as a matter of fact I am happy to see you.

419ers take Canadian for $150,000

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Da Nile: Biggest river in da world.

@ Peter Kay>

"However, there's a difference between a one off act of stupidity and repeated occurences over an extended period of time involving multiple people where not one of you questions what's going on. At some point these people must have been fully awake and sober. I mean, why?"

Never underestimate the power of denial. With every step, you dig yourself a deeper hole and the awful truth you have to face gets worse. By the end you'll do anything to keep your fantasy alive. C'mon. We've all fallen for that one, haven't we?

Steve Jobs dismisses death rumours

mark adrian bell
Thumb Up

And he still manages to be CEO of Apple.

What? He had a Whipple's procedure? And he still manages to be CEO of Apple? That's heroic. Mr. Jobs, I salute you. Recover well.

- (nurse) Mark

Net pedants dismantle Quantum of Solace

mark adrian bell
Paris Hilton

Errors of fact

What? Errors of fact in the new James Bond film? I'm starting to wonder if these films aren't completely made up....

Paris, because I suspect that some stories about her might be made up too.

What's lurking in your data centre?

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

@Big_Boomer: Non standard tech

It's not just in IT that individual departments insist on using idiosyncratic non company standard tech. All across the hospital where I work we use the same needle free connector for central venous lines. All except for the Intensive Care unit, where they have to use their own. So whenever patients get transfered out of the ICU, not only are they complicated and difficult (or they wouldn't have gone to the ICU in the first place), but they need the fiddly sterile procedure of changing the claves over to the ward standard.

Asus to phase out sub-10in Eee PCs, says CEO

mark adrian bell
Paris Hilton

love

I love my 8.9" Eee PC 900. At 990g I can carry it around all day and not even notice, and at AUD $500, the price was right. Of course I wiped XP off it and replaced it with Linux. Who needs XP, or an Atom processor, or a 10" screen? A little more battery power would be good, but I can live without it.

Paris, because I love her too.

The iPhone App Store - a classic protection racket

mark adrian bell
Unhappy

Hey, this is no fun!

Who censored all the bad words out of my Failandyou?