Re: Availability
>I ended up with a load of Levano laptops
Ah yes, the off-brand knockoff from the same people that brought you Sorny and Panaphonics hi-fi...
3818 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2010
>I ended up with a load of Levano laptops
Ah yes, the off-brand knockoff from the same people that brought you Sorny and Panaphonics hi-fi...
I have a 27” iMac, bought new in 2010. It’s still soldiering on. I’ve upgraded the original HDD to an SSD, upgraded the RAM, and even swapped out the original socketed Core i5 processor for a faster Core i7. It’s been one of the most durable and long-lasting PCs I’ve ever bought.
I occasionally looked at getting a newer iMac, but each year they seemed to get more and more restricted. Non-upgradable storage, CPU… and on the latest ones the screen glass is bonded to the chassis in a way that positively deters disassembly. So I never bothered. These days I run Intel NUCs instead. Far more flexible and upgradeable.
Apple seem to have disappeared up their own posterior as far as the balance between style and practicality goes.
Indeed.
"We licenced the software to you, so you owe us, even if you didn't want it, don't need it, and never installed it."
vs
"We licensed the OnStar service package to you, so you owe us, even if" etc etc.
Funny that this stuff is allowed, yet if - for example - you go putting books through random peoples' letterboxes and then sending them an invoice weeks later, it's rightly considered to be an unfair contract and not something you can enforce.
Ain't ongoing-X-as-a-Service, own-nothing-rent-everything great?
Many, many times in the past have I wedged a Euro-type Shuko or two-pin plug into a UK socket, even on occasion using a small screwdriver in the Earth-pin hole to open the socket's internal safety shutters.
Take that, MK electrical safety engineers!
OTOH, I have here in my office now several of those extremely sketchy Chinese-made "will accept any plug from any country" power-strips, and those give me the heebie-jeebies. Arcy-sparky and wibbly-wobbly don't mix with mains voltages.
At least 20 of us, myself included, are glad you couldn't resist.
Although I suspect the young'uns around here won't have a clue as to what you're riffing on!
Yeah yeah, OK, I stand corrected. Surface has a perfectly honourable tradition of enverbification.
I wrote my comment from behind a red (october?) mist of rage. What I meant to write, I think, was "Surface as a neologism for Reveal/Show/Present? Aaaaaaargh!!"
Thank you for the tactful correction.
I wonder if an effective test for a suspected live deepfake would be to have the subject hold up a life-size photo of their “claimed” face - or even a random other face - in front of them, and see if the image jumps/distorts at all as the deepfake algorithm tries to map onto an unexpected set of reference points?
I had a VCS, although I can't remember how many switches were on it. On/Off, Black&White/Colour, and I can't remember any more than that!
But I agree completely with the author's comments about Combat. Finest game suite ever devised for total subjugation of one's younger brother. Whether at the Tanks or the Biplanes sub-games, I humiliated him in a manner that can only be described as "total pwnage", as I believe the hep young cats say these days.
How could something with a resolution of about 20x15 and a palette of migraine-inducing hues that made the ZX Spectrum look like 4K HDR, be so much fun?
Hey, Cortana, what's the English translation for "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Afonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" that I just saw on a road-sign?
Hey, if it helps, this site's journalism gets my approval. I for one wish Andrew O and Lewis Page still wrote for the Reg, because their pieces were always well-written and thought-provoking - even when I didn't agree with the premise. I'm pretty sure AO liked to bait his readership occasionally by being deliberately contrarian, just to kick the metaphorical hornets' nest and stand back sniggering...
Plus, doesn't "more radioactive" equate to "is radioactive and dangerous for much less time"? IANANRE but that's my understanding - that generally, you can have waste that has a long half-life and is slightly radioactive for long, long periods, or you can have waste that has a short half-life and is very radioactive, but for a manageable length of time.
> After all these years, has "Resume from Suspend" ever been fixed on the Pinebook Pro, Pine Micro?
Well, from reading some of the comments above, I infer that Pine Micro has worked around that issue, by making the Pinebook Pro permanently woke.
I'm reminded of the exchange between Michael Caine and Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on the subject of the former's wine cellar.. something along the lines of
"At least you can drink the wine!"
"No, I couldn't drink them, they're far too valuable."
"Fine! Well sell them!"
"Oh no, I couldn't possibly do that, they mean far too much to me..."
Well yes, cardboard was the OEM factory solution.
The better solution for the Mini enthusiast was to take a Marigold rubber glove, cut the fingertips off, feed an HT lead through each finger-hole and ziptie the glove around each lead and the distributor. Total waterproofing.
You've reminded me of this delightful Punch cartoon from February 1940.
> For those who are interested...the electric typewriter keyboard was basically an array of push switches on a grid - the hardware was a ribbon cable soldered to the grid
Awww... of all the ways to do it, that is the most boring and sensible one to choose.
I was hoping you'd say your company's product was a Heath-Robinson/Rube-Goldberg assemblage of actuator rods and solenoids that was clamped to the typewriter keyboard to press each key as necessary!
This world is too dull.
Modified cattle prod, you say? Allow Eddie and Richie to demonstrate...
Replying reeeeeeeeeeeally late to this thread (because it was referenced from a July 2022 "On Call" story). Greetings to you all from the strange and futuristic world of 2022. But I digress.
Your Agnus Dei story reminds me of my favourite classical music anecdote.
There is, as some fules kno, a choral piece by the 16th-Century English composer Thomas Tallis named "Spem in Alium", which is Latin for "Hope in Any Other". It's a beautiful piece, and frequently performed by choral societies.
...Who, distressingly often, mis-spell it as "Spem in Allium".
Which would translate as "Hope in the Onion"! So if you see any confused musicians wandering round worshipping shallots...
> - 20 colors of silicone bumpers to chose from
Nice, but ITYM “car will be made entirely of Gorilla Glass and magnesium alloy and will look exquisite, but will scratch and chip as soon as you drive through a light drizzle, so at a very reasonable cost Apple will sell you their own or 3rd-party silicone car-brascorsets that will protect the bodywork at the cost of making your exquisite new vehicle about 2x the size and resembling a hideous safety concept car from the 1970s”
ITYM “Veblen good”. Definition for anyone who isn’t familiar with the term.
I'm tempted to make a flippant remark along the lines of "yes, and the 30,000 black hats worldwide who have root access to your PC really appreciate the availability of the printer too..." but I won't.
Because I'm better than that. And also I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the machine air-gapped or otherwise protected.
Including Ten Pund notes made by Mitchell and Webb, with credit cards that improve on the originals by being made of cheese?