* Posts by David 132

3819 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2010

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Don't know if it's just that my coffee hasn't kicked in yet...

Including Ten Pund notes made by Mitchell and Webb, with credit cards that improve on the originals by being made of cheese?

David 132 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Years ago....

Anyone else remember when computer software manuals were printed on green or red paper to try and deter little Johnny from having his dad duplicate the manual using his office photocopier?

Beta Basic for the ZX Spectrum is one I particularly remember - black ink on dark red paper. Barely readable by humans, never mind photocopiers. And using that replacement BASIC without a manual would have been a PITA.

(Pint for the author of Beta Basic. It was awesome and was what should have been in the Speccy's ROM from the get-go.)

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: That's so stupid...

Well, they did hand-colour the notes with the finest Green. After, presumably, making rings and brooches out of it.

Microsoft to blockheads: NFTs and blockchains aren't welcome in Minecraft

David 132 Silver badge
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>We've never needed NFTs to trade oil or pork bellies.

Or indeed, Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice. Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd were trading that almost 40 years ago.

(Edit: Holy crap. Typing that, I just realized myself that the movie is nearly 40 years old. What the hell??)

Apple forgoes cooling systems in M2 MacBook Air

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: The title is no longer required.

Accidentally defragging your SSD?

British boffins make touchless computing tech on the cheap

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Re: Where's the God in this?

Oh go on. You're among friends like-minded unreconstructed perverts here.

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Where's the God in this?

It has no cloud dependency. No DLC, no microtransactions. Doesn't send telemetry or push "exclusive content from carefully-curated partners". No enforced updates. No mandatory account creation. No social media integration.

Please, at least tell me that it has a Modern UI where text and controls are indistinguishable from each other (and the window background) and there are dark patterns to steer you away from the useful options?

Spidey-sense tingling. Does not compute. Error! Error!

Sage accused of strong-arming customers into subscriptions

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

Re: SaaS

Reminds me of Bernard and Manny drunkenly discussing their impending fortune:

"Manny, we are going to be ve...very rich."

"How rich, Bernard?"

"Oooh... uncontrolib... incontinently rich."

"Success will bring problems! I don't want to wake up in rehab with Shergar!"

..and it just gets sillier from there.

Disentangling the Debian derivatives: Which should you use?

David 132 Silver badge
Coat

Re: No it isn't

Well, let's see how good the Register's obscenity filters are and call it:

"Semprini Belgium".

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Devuan

I made a joke in another article's comments a few days ago about systemd taking over every aspect of the linux platform, and ended my comment with hyperbole along the lines of "some distant future version will even..." (here, I racked my brains to think of something as far away from init scripts as it was possible to imagine) "...handle DISK PARTITIONING, hahahahaha"

Only for a fellow commentard to point out that yes, systemd now handles disk partitioning too.

Truth, stranger, fiction, etc etc.

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

The Debian installatiøn røutine once bit my sister.

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Ice Cream flavo[u]rs

Stretching your (well, Sir Pterry/Neil Gaiman’s) analogy perhaps too far, I wonder what the Them would make of the Goats’ Cheese, Marionberry & Jalapeño ice-cream I bought from the somewhat hipster-ish Salt & Straw last week?

FCC chair wishes for 100Mbps down, 20Mbps up broadband minimum in US

David 132 Silver badge
Mushroom

2015's 25/3 standard would be welcome here.

I'm about 40 minutes away from Portland Oregon, one of the country's tech hubs. I'm just off a major highway, with a town of 100K people about 5 miles down the hill from me and another town of similar size about 8 miles in the other direction. Neighbors all around. This is not the back end of nowhere by any means.

Right now I'm paying $150/month to a local niche ISP for a microwave relay link that bounces off a dish down in the valley and gives me maybe 14Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up on a good day. It does at least have the side-benefit of dropping the occasional cooked-from-the-inside eagle onto my lawn (just kidding, nature lovers).

So, yeah. I'd like to get the previous version of the standard, never mind Rosenworcel's new improved one. 100/20? In my dreams.

Go to hell, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon... and especially Ziply, who keep spamming my phone with unsolicited texts advertising their fiber service even though they don't serve my area.

Copper shortage keeps green energy, tech ventures grounded

David 132 Silver badge

Re: RTSC

Also used - in the past at least - in domestic wiring. My house in Oregon, built in the early 80s, has aluminium wiring for several of the circuits. And there are special (galvanically not electrically) isolating connectors widely available for bridging it to copper.

CP/M's open-source status clarified after 21 years

David 132 Silver badge

My first PC - in the pedantic, “technically it stands for Personal Computer so includes just about anything smaller than a mainframe” sense - was a Durango F-85. I never could find a CP/M-80 boot disk for it, so the poor thing never did more than boot to a flashing ‘_’ prompt. Shame, because it was an impressive piece of hardware - built-in keyboard, 2x 5-1/4” floppies, and daisywheel printer, with even a little monitor too.

David 132 Silver badge

Re: 128 Mbytes!

Obligatory XKCD :)

David 132 Silver badge
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Liam - commiserations on still waiting for your Spectrum Next. I’m in the same boat, as the Aug 2021 release date has faded into memory due to so many factors. Still, the frequent updates on Kickstarter from Henrique, Alvin, Jim & others are keeping my anticipation alive.

Fingers crossed that the Release 2 machines - complete with new FPGAs and re-re-re-tweaked motherboards - will ship before too long, eh?

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

David 132 Silver badge

Re: Nice Car...

And it doesn’t even have warm buttocks while doing so.

David 132 Silver badge
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Upvoted.

However, my own beloved Volvo is currently en panne, having suddenly and mysteriously and without any warning whatsoever lost all its oil at 60mph on the highway. If the garage ever get back to me with a diagnosis - or post-mortem, I suspect - I will be facing such a large bill that I could cosplay as a pelican :(

David 132 Silver badge

Re: That's a nice Beemer you've got there

Minor point of order: after years of referring to the cars as Beemers, I learned quite recently that among aficionados of the brand, that nickname is reserved for BMW bikes. The cars are, apparently, “bimmers”.

Not sure if I personally care enough to respect the distinction, but there you are.

David 132 Silver badge
Pint

No, what you have bought is a licence to use the car for a limited period, subject to the manufacturer’s terms and conditions which can be changed at any time without prior notice and which you agreed to when you opened the car door.

*Your* car? What a quaint idea. Like trafficators, floor-mounted headlight switches or hand-cranked engine starting.

Icon: have a beer. At least we’re all used to only renting that.

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Heated seats?

Yeah, but you fellas have to pay instead for ‘roo bars, spider-proof window seals, and drop-bear insurance, so don’t get too smug…

David 132 Silver badge

Re: Nice Car...

You think you’re joking but there was a kerfuffle a few months ago - sorry, CBA to look up the details - about a motorbike jacket with a built-in airbag, where the airbag functionality had a monthly subscription to enable it.

Come off your bike and are flying through the air towards a telephone pole? Welp, better have your credit card ready to renew that airbag subscription…

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Dave at the garage can sort you out

> the pin number

…if you brought him cash from the ATM machine?

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Raise the Jolly Roger!

A neighbor of mine has a ‘71 Camaro with a 350. Yes, fun is the word.

David 132 Silver badge
Windows

Re: Raise the Jolly Roger!

Don’t forget the whole “let’s put EVERY vehicle control on a touch screen, which has no tactile feedback whatsoever and is really difficult to prod at accurately without taking your eyes off the road when you’re in motion on any road that isn’t glass-smooth”, which is my personal pet-hate-du-jour (ok, and long-sentence-du-jour, touché)

Icon… that’s me, that is.

David 132 Silver badge
Unhappy

What no-one here seems to have picked up on..

(unless I’ve missed a comment, in which case my apologies)

…is that this allows BMW to reset the feature/subscription when the car changes hands. *You* might have paid the $400 or whatever for “lifetime” heated seats, but I’m sure the seats will be deactivated as soon as you sell the car. See also the similar recent incident with a Tesla.

So it’s basically, perpetual revenue for BMW. It’s all aligned with the move in our own beloved IT industry towards <whatever>-as-a-service. Why sell your customer something once, for a one-off payment, when you can milk them for ever more, and for even more, on a monthly basis?

Grrrrr.

Behold: The first images snapped by the James Webb Space Telescope

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: yeah, and there's

“But he’s a liar and I’m not sure about you”

RIP Kirsty :(

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Obligatory reference...

Typical. You wait ages for a bus and then 1,026,141,663,954,876 of them turn up at once.

Microsoft tests CD ripping for Media Player in Windows 11

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Do you remember the first time?

Around that time, I had Doom on CD-RW. I wrote a tool that automatically erased it and replaced it with Quake.

Now that was a game-changer.

(sorry)

Cell, Wi-Fi can work for Windows 11 on Surface Duo

David 132 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: And there's the cast . . .

It’s definitely a vast, untapped segment of the market isn’t it? A mobile device that fuses together the respect for user privacy of Google, the reliability of Windows, and the pricing of Apple…

Choosing a non-Windows OS on Lenovo Secured-core PCs is trickier than it should be

David 132 Silver badge
Linux

Well, he was doing it wrong.

The preferred, “approved” way to install Linux these days is on top of Windows using WSL. That way, Microsoft can ensure that you get the best possible Linux experience.

(I couldn’t decide whether to go with the Trollface icon, because I worried that people might think the above comment is serious…)

Leaked Uber docs reveal frequent use of 'kill switch' to deactivate tech, thwart investigators

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: "Dawn Raid Manual"

> I was pondering who else would have a "Dawn Raid Manual"

Anyone who has to simultaneously use Dawn dishwashing soap and Raid fly-spray, obviously. That’s all it was. Perfectly innocent.

Indian tax authorities raid offices of Chinese smartphone maker Vivo

David 132 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Gold?

That poor boy was supposed to go to Lourdes!

(Icon: DRINK!)

Vendors are hiking prices up to 30 percent and claiming 'it's inflation'

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: To be fair...

>(So you can obviously save money by inventing a compression algorithm that turns all your 0s into 1s.)

public byte fCompressionForDef(byte input)

{

return (byte)1;

}

There. Boundless savings! I am prepared to licence this on very reasonable terms...

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: It's shit like this...

> engage with your supplier regally talking

OK, I know you meant to type "regularly" but thank you, or thank your autocorrect, for a lovely mental image.

"One is not happy with the service one is receiving from you. We are not amused. Off with your head!"

Microsoft splits up Windows Beta Channel Insiders

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Of course!

Well, obviously. That’s what the letters on a 0-9 numeric keypad are for - you just have to spell out someone’s email address using the telephone keypad and the resulting number will connect to them.

I admit I’m not sure how you dial a ‘@‘ symbol, but I think you can dial the Email-From-your-Landline helpdesk at 999, and ask the nice person who answers the call to walk you through the process.

Marriott Hotels admits to third data breach in 4 years

David 132 Silver badge
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“A HANDBAG?

-also Lady Bracknell, albeit less relevant to this discussion…

Gtk 5 might drop X11 support, says GNOME dev

David 132 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: who made this comment

Could be worse. If we’re not careful, they’ll build systemd support into GTK5.

Or maybe vice-versa.

Rufus and ExplorerPatcher: Tools to remove Windows 11 TPM pain and more

David 132 Silver badge

Re: +1 ExplorerPatcher

Right now I’m trying to find a working method of getting rid of the annoying “header banner” in Windows 10 Settings. You know, the one that tells you how you could be earning Microsoft points or whatever. Useless waste of space.

There was a method that got rid of it, using a powershell command, but it seems that since a couple of recent Windows Updates, the header is back and there’s no way to remove it.

That is very Microsoft. They want to shove a feature in front of you? Well by Jove they’ll keep doing so, and bypass any of your attempts to avoid it.

Which is why I’m not wholly excited about the new version of Rufus the article mentions. Rufus is a fine tool, but once it gets into the sphere of modifying/bypassing Windows restrictions, it’s dancing on quicksand.

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Desktop on OneDrive by default?

Funny how the suggested defaults always seem to favour Microsoft, isn’t it?

Would you like us to spy on you? [X] Yes

Allow apps to access your location? [X] Yes

…etc, etc.

And their pathetic clingy attempts to stop you switching away from Edge to a proper browser are infuriating, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant.

W3C overrules objections by Google, Mozilla to decentralized identifier spec

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Tim

Well you say that, but how do we know it’s really you? If only there were some sort of agreed standard for confirming people’s identities. Preferably decentralized.

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: You know something's wrong

> Yes, that would be progress /s

Ah, I see you’re still using DOS. The cool kids are on PowerShell now, so in this case it would be

Progress Set-CommentTone sarcastic

:)

Apple's guy in charge of stopping insider trading guilty of … insider trading

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Rounded corners

Space Gray™️.

Fixed that for you.

David 132 Silver badge

Re: It's exactly what you'd expect.

<Rimmer>

ALPHABETTI SPAGHETTI?!??

</Rimmer>

The Raspberry Pi Pico goes wireless with the $6 W

David 132 Silver badge
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Re: Pounds?

> Indeed, and in the US, it would be $6 + sales tax

Which here in Oregon, at least, isn’t a thing. It’s nice to pay the price of an item, rather than California-style (price of item)+(state sales tax)+(city sales tax)+(tourist tax or whatever else local politicians see fit to add)

City-killing asteroid won't hit Earth in 2052 after all

David 132 Silver badge
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Obligatory Pratchett quote…

‘Ye gods,' he said, under his breath. ‘The Mayor of Quirm has been struck by a meteorite . . . again.'

'Can that happen?' said Sacharissa.

'Apparently. This is from Mr Pune at the council offices there. Sensible chap, not much imagination. He says that this time it was waiting for the mayor in an alley…'

David 132 Silver badge
Happy

"Come, friendly bombs asteroid and fall on Slough...

...I haven't practiced its pronunciation enough."

OpenSSL 3.0.5 awaits release to fix potential worse-than-Heartbleed flaw

David 132 Silver badge
Boffin

Re: AVX512 -- Available on exactly which Intel processors?......

FYI for those wondering it's simple to find answers like that on Ark.intel.com. That link is directly to a search for "processors with AVX-512".

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

David 132 Silver badge

Well said, albeit badly HTML formatted :)