Posts by John Brown (no body) 25376 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"until she got the terminology right."
I remember back in the day when Americans always seemed to refer to a soldering[*] "gun" when doing PCB work and the visuals in my mind were horrifying!
* Also usually pronounced with a homeopathic L sound in the middle, something you can't quite tell is actually there when spoken aloud :-)
but I always try to touch a metal surface before touching sensitive areas like a motherboard or DIMM, just in case.
Yes, if it's not something you are doing every day, all day, AND you understand what you are doing, you can be perfectly safe without using the proper and approved precautions :-)
"Funny thing though - it seemed like static electricity was WAY more of a thing when I was a kid. I remember getting some BIG shocks sometimes growing up, but I honestly can't remember the last time"
Nylon was still the new "wonder" material in the time period you are speaking of, I also lived through it. It wasn't unusual for underwear, trousers and shirts to have a nylon content if not actually 100% nylon. It wasn't just women's clothes. And plastic "patent leather" shoes.
Likewise, nylon carpets in the home and workplace.
Some of that still hasn't left us, even if it's not always nylon. Other man made static generating materials are available :-)
"Do any surface models have a battery that can be replaced relatively easily?"
Surprisingly , yes. Although the official MS repair guides specify that if you remove the battery in most models for any reason, you must replace the battery and not reuse it. Most have very few replaceable parts, and some require you place a pad over the screen and something in the region of 20Kg/50lb weight on top for 30 mins to "fix" the glue when installing a new display panel.
Depends. If you are fixing it yourself, the "labour charge" is your time, rewarded by the feeling of satisfaction that you fixed it yourself and will probably get at least another year or two out of it. So your dishwasher only cost £50 to repair unless you called someone in to fix it.
Yes, you could buck the trend and guidelines but anyone doing so had to be doing something special or have some very good reason for doing so. I don't think WP had a good enough reason to do so considering that GUIs were clearly by then the next big thing and the growth in PC use was increasing rapidly. New users numbers were probably beginning to outstrip established users so training costs and time to become familiar with a program being cut was a selling point by now, and it was already a huge change in the way the interface worked, so a good time to change everything else to fit in with the new GUI paradigm. I also came from DOS background and had the same issues (I was a WordStar and later a SmartWare user, but I could the benefits of the CUA and working with it. (I was also teaching new IT users to convert from manual systems to PCs at the time, which probably helps give some perspective of why i thought that way. They already had a culture shock, but at least they could get the basics of any Windows program down pat and transfer that learned skill to any Windows program - I still had to teach them where the ON switch was, and the care and feeding of floppy disks, making copies/backups etc, but that didn't change with Windows :-))
When I could finally afford a printer, I balanced cheapness against "quality"[1] and bought a Seikosh GP80 (which was also rebranded and sold by Commodore and Tandy[2]). It was cheap because it had no pins in the print head. It had a single hammer and the "platen", in
cross section, was a 5 pointed star and, in effect, replaced the pins. It was a "7-pin" printer so the hammer had to potentially strike 7 times for each column of dots times 5 columns to make up a character cell. It was slow and noisy! And I'm pretty sure that ad linked above is the same ad I used to buy mine too.
1. for some low value of quality LOL. Not the cheapest on the market, but a full 80 columns and not as crap as thermal or "spark" printers often sold for ZX-80/81/spectrums :-)
2. Both of them splurged on the slightly larger version that took standard 8.5" tractor paper, mine only used the smaller 8" paper although I did later get a 3rd party add-on that allowed friction feed to proper sized A4 paper could be used.
"Give me PaperClip on my Commodore 64."
I'll see you PaperClip and raise you Electric Pencil on a 16K RAM, 1.77MHz Z80 based TRS-80. It was quite usable once you stumped up the Character generator EPROM that added lower case letters and added the extra 1kx1-bit RAM chip because the default video RAM was only 7-bit and didn't support lower case :-)
And just to pre-empt the local Yorkshiremen, yeas, printers were hard (and expensive!) to come by back then so yeah, we had to make our printouts by chiselling out the letters one by one onto slate. With our teeth!.
Clip art was great if you, or someone in the office, had the skills to create the specific stuff you needed for your company or industry type. But, yeah, so many just used the free stuff that came with the package or cheaped out and bought collections of PD, which was invariably either shit or not relevant. And then went on to use it on EVERY document, along with a different and completely unsuitable font for every line and/or heading.
"When I had to switch to Windows for work reasons, I naturally tried WP for Windows. Imagine my horror when I realized most function keys weren't working anymore, or they were different from the ones in the DOS version! I had to faff around with the menus or mice, which killed my productivity."
While I agree with you, back then it was still the rare, regular users who spent the time, sometimes months or more, learning all the ins and outs of one or two programmes and became incredibly knowledgable and proficient users. So when the change to Windows came and it often wasn't even possible to maintain backwards comparability, people such as you (and me, but different programmes) screamed loudly about it. At about the same time, many office staff were just starting to get their first ever computers (it wasn't normal for all office staff to have a PC for some years after Windows95 came out, let alone 3.0/3.1) and most could pick up in a day or at worst a week, the basics of using a word processor in WYSIWYG that simply could not be done in DOS. So I do have a little sympathy for the devs switching a DOS programme to Windows and trying to fit in with the semi-enforced CUA interface constraints where function and alt-function etc keys had a fixed, OS wide meaning so could no longer we used in the same way.
"Microsoft's real advantage was that all its competitors had fewer fingers in fewer pies, so couldn't bundle software as effectively."
We went with Smart, later SmartWare (and I'm quite shocked how long it continued being developed after we moved on to other stuff!)
SmartWare is an office suite, originally developed for MS-DOS and Unix, and later Microsoft Windows, including a database, word processor, spreadsheet, and a (now obsolete) "communication" module for communication via a modem
I was very impressed with it at the time, it was the first truly integrated "office" package I'd used that worked the way I wanted it to. I think the closest rival was probably Lotus Symphony, which seemed clunk by comparison, long before Windows came on the scene.
My first "play" with OCR was when CP/M was still king and MS-DOS was starting to make inroads. It was a device called OmniRead or OmniReader or some such which doesn't show up on Google except as much more recent devices so either they survived, got bought out or someone picked over the bones and bought the name.
Imagine a document copy-holder with the flappy bar across it. Now lay it flat and there's a "puck" you slide along the retaining bar across the page, reading a single line of text from a limited number of "readable" typefaces and point size, plugged into a serial port and it constantly makes mistakes, even after lots of "training". And imagine how unforgiving it was to going to fast, to slow, or not moving accurately down to the next line. And yet, it seemed wonderful at the time, even if it was only kept as a curiosity :-) Even a non-typist could beat it, even on a bad day. We even experimented with attaching it to a flatbed plotter, but that wasn't much better as the scan head required the plastic bar for the calibration marks and the POC was bad enough we didn't bother to go any further, such as a creating a lighter, thinner calibration strip the pen plotter head could cope with.
It wasn't actually bad, as such, just too early in the technology for operating it and the CPU power needed to make it work, since IIRC that was all onboard the device itself and only plain text came into the host computer.
It's possible that some of them may well be thinking along those line now. They have a huge field tests currently running of what happens when you pull your ads from a massive internet service serving many millions of people. All those advertisers who pulled out of X/Twitter can now look at their previous ad spending on that platform and compare with any perceptible drop in sales since they stopped. They have real, hard data to work with. It'd be interesting to be on the inside of those discussion :-)
"There will always be clueless people, like the ones who run Chrome without any extensions and remain blissfully ignorant that they bear the full weight of all the ads plus all of Google's tracking."
Sadly, that seems to be the vast majority of people. Although of Google are going so far as to test blocking ad blockers, maybe the message is getting through to enough people that they've noticed? Or maybe someone wants a new paint job on their super yacht and every penny counts! Or share price. Gotta keep demonstrating growth to "the market" or the share price might drop.
"on TV where the show will be edited by the broadcaster to ensure that the advert doesn't play right in the middle of a sentence they regularly completely destroy the flow of whatever I'm trying to watch."
Some of the non-terrestrial channels do that. It's all automated and they've not even used a filter/detector to "look" for non-speech sections or other methods of finding a suitable insertion point. It's just set to play an ad break at a specified time and no one is controlling it. Or if there is, it's one person looking after multiple broadcast channels. It may be more noticeable on a UK channel broadcasting a US show because we have different, more restrictive rules on when and for how long ads can be shown. Those US TV shows clearly have spots where an ad break was intended, but we don't get one there. It does depend on both the channel and the show.
"Traditional TV ads are targeted that way, and they seem to make a lot more money."
Only partially, mainly at peak viewing hours. Other times of the day, the ads are targetted by expected demographics. Just look at all the ads aimed at retired people on daytime telly, ads for kids at teatime and ads for porn and gambling late at night.
"Newpipe for your phone, Smarttube for your Android TV / Firestick and Minitube for your PC it is then. They are standalone apps so the recently added Google adblock detecting JS doesn't do anything to their ability to play back without ads (for now at least)"
Years ago, TuCows was THE place to go for PD/Shareware and blocking the ad server when it got more and more intrusive was easy enough. But then they directed all the download links via the ad server. I never went back again. "TuCows who?" you say? Exactly :-)
"However there are already suggestions for alternatives elsewhere in this comments section, that I'll be investigating."
Like bookmarking the channels? All I do, if I find a channel I like, is go to the "Videos" tab, 2nd from left, which defaults to showing the videos in date order, latest first. No need to "subscribe" or sign in. If I want to support them, there are other methods than "likes" etc. and most seem to get very little from Youtube, making their money in other but related ways, eg Patreon, merchandise etc. It helps if you can maintain and manage you bookmarks in folders properly and stick to it of course :-)
It was described as "a non-separating payload" which seems to indicate that it will part of the vehicle taking the lander to Lunar orbit, not part of anything that will be coming back to Earth to burn up. I#m making the assumption that everything above the 2nd stage, apart from the fairings, will be going out as far as the Moon where the lander will then separate after achieving Lunar orbit. I don't see the lander having any more mass or fuel than absolutely required for the landing and will rely on the 3rd stage/orbital vehicle to actually put it in orbit first.
"Hmm, fibre underscored as bad spelling even thought language is set to en-GB"
Setting language to en-GB doesn't allow for spelling mistakes in an en-GB dictionary that may not have been compiled in GB :-)
Or if it's a US based OS supplier which will default to en-US at the slightest hint of any discrepancies.
Agreed, except, of course, the article specifically quotes that they didn't go for the age discrimination as that's much harder to prove. He won on technicalities over his contracted "lay off" terms and the terms they actually implemented along with Canadian "best practices" and "tradition" where his age and length of service was considered.
"Read the updated original report - seems another driver caused a "hit and run" incident, which caused the pedestrian to move into the path of the Cruise vehicle and the Cruise then moved to try and avoid the passenger."
That's exactly how it was reported in the original El Reg article.
"Especially for... people who were born at a time when nobody flew at all. Mind boggling really."
Oh yes! I never flew Concord, but Grandad did. He was SO excited about and reminded me that he remembered the news breaking over here in the UK of Wilbur and Orvilles first powered flight. Naturally, he also watched the Moon landing. Triple whammy in terms of aerospace :-)
(And many other "firsts" too, of course, having lived through two World Wars and witnessed both Zeppelin air raids and Luftwaffe air raids.)
"Also the flight from one city to another has to land so far away, that its in an entirely different game."
I've often wondered if anyone has done any assessment or calculations on short haul flights and discovered there are routes that end up starting and landing so far from the "source" city and "destination" city that you actually travel further on the ground than in the air, ie it would be simpler to just drive or use a train/bus.
It strikes me that the lawyers were the ones deciding the "settlement" was acceptable because you can be sure as shit they got more than a "Big Mac" each out of it.
If the settlement is so low as to be meaningless to the plaintiffs, then this is exactly the sort of case that needs to actually go to trial and be legally resolves, not settled in a no blame agreement. But then the prosecution lawyers are risking a loss in the case or even a lower payout even if they win, either by a lower "fine" or higher costs in the longer more expensive process. Most likely it's cost/benefit analysis on their part with no consideration or care at all for their clients.
"I have lost count of the number of drives I have seen in server rooms with an issue light where the comment was "its been like that for a year"."
I had that issue at a small client site. No on-site techies at all, they phone in to HQ if there was an issue. Anyway HQ calls our company and I get sent out, I get there and see the two red flashing LEDs on the 3-drive array and ask when they started flashing. Answer, from the non-technical user: "Well, the one on the left has always flashed since I started here two years ago. The other one started flashing yesterday afternoon and that's when everything stopped working." This is far enough back in time that not only did not everyone in an office automatically get a PC, but new starters, experienced or not, may have never used a computer before, so I definitely didn't blame the poor user who'd not been told what to look out for. (The server was on top of the filing cabinet by her desk) She was quite upset when I explained what had happened, but reassured her that she wasn't to blame for not knowing how the system worked if no one had told her.
On another site, I was called in after hours to replace a failed drive in another 3-drive array. This time, the non-techy security guard took me to the offending beast and even he noticed that a helpful user had pulled the "faulty" drive and there were now two flashing red LEDs where there ought to be only one.
But, in a server room, there's no excuse. People working in there are SUPPOSED to KNOW :-)
"some flaky controller that will eventually go EOL."
And we probably all remember the days of the RAID controllers that stored the details of the array config only on the card so when the card failed you were totally FUBARed because no one knew or bothered to document the config. And the client probably cheaped out on a proper backup because...RAID :-(
"The professor's name was Elwyn Berlekamp."
LOL, I kinda get the feeling that was intended as a trick question from someone assuming you were blowing hot air.
(@RobDog, please correct me if I'm wrong and I apologise now if I was)
Having said that, being such an unusual name (at least to me), I looked at his Wikipedia page. Looks like he was a very clever bloke who only died fairly recently. However, there's no mention of YOU on that Wikipedia page, so.... :-p
"BT has said that recovering the copper would cost more than its value."
If that's really the case, it surprises me. Copper is not cheap and they use contractors for most if not all of this work. At the very least, I'd expect the contractors to pull the copper and sell it as an extra profit margin if BT really don't care enough to want it for themselves. It's often how demolition companies eek out the profit margins. Sell everything you can to make an extra buck, eg stripping a building of all the pipework/ducting/cabling you can and when you pull down/blow up the building, break the rubble up, get the steel and rebar to sell, and then sell off the concrete as hardcore. Waste nothing, sell everything :-)
I was watching a YouTube video a little while ago by someone building a new high speed NAS. I forget the details, but I was kinda gobsmacked by the upload speed when he was benchmarking the file copy process. 40Mb/s on the upload while he was testing download. So, all those ACK packets just to tell the other end the download was proceeding was somewhat faster than what most of us could have even hoped for in total just a few years ago :-)
So, 100/2 or 1000/50 sounds quite limiting if downloading at full throttle and maybe someone else needs to upload something. There's asymmetric and there's taking the piss :-)
"Admittedly I have VM as an option, but I also have flushing my own head in the toilet as an option and I'm not sure which one is preferable."
It depends where in the country you are with VM. It seems to be a "postcode lottery". Where I am, I've had very, very few issues with VM. I hear their support isn't all that great, but I've only ever rarely had to call them, maybe a half a dozen times in, oh, the last 10 years or so? (been with them a lot longer, since they were United Artists and through various buy-outs and re-brands) and that's because the connection has gone down completely and it;s usually been back up the same day or even an hour or two. No issues with speeds in general but I only pay for the cheapest 120Mb option. You should check with some locals if you know anyone using VM and see what their experience is before deciding to put your head down the toilet :-)
"Yeah, I have 1000/220 FTTP at home and I frequently upload/download huge VMDK's and VHD's to test stuff for hours on end and barely notice any drop on the upload or the download to be fair."
Your neighbours, on the other hand.... :-)
"That figure of 42.9% is at least six months out of date, and possibly a year."
Yes, I think the article reported the stats were from 2022, the most current wide ranging stats across the EU+ region.
"Most people will continue to buy the cheapest service available to them."
Oh, absolutely. At least in the UK, I suspect the vast majority buy based on price, just like with most utilities, chopping and changing when they find a "better" deal. After all, when you change gas/leccy providers, what comes down the "pipe" is the same, no matter who you pay for it. That's how most customers think. Just because they use technology doesn't mean they understand it. And those of us who do understand what we are buying will buy as much as we need because we understand what our needs are, and often not always the latest "shiny" top end speeds. And cap all that off with the huge number of customers who have no wired devices and cheap nasty ISP provided wireless routers and can probably never get the headline speeds anyway. The cheap nasty ISP WiFi router might have a GigE port on it, but it probably struggles to share out that full Gig of bandwidth across multiple wireless devices.
"actually using them to do work or are they just using them to mess around or run IOD-type applications?"
It very much depends on what you mean by "work". Not all work is CPU or RAM intensive. The one client I visit where I actually sit down and do "work", I rarely need more than Teams, Outlook and a browser running 4-6 tabs at the same time (everything is "cloudy"). But that's Win10 on a current mid-range laptop. At home, I frequently use my ancient Toshiba laptop running FreeBSD and rarely hit CPU or RAM bottle necks, even with <counting> 33 tabs open currently, although I do offload heavy tasks via SSH to bigger boxes up in the attic, since it's not as warm up there and I'd much rather be sat in the lounge with my wife :-)
Oh, yes, I do agree with you. Most still running steam engines will almost certainly have had the boiler replaced, at the very least. And I've seen car and aircraft "restorations" that are lucky to have as much as 10% original parts. On the tech side though, there are mainframes and minis from that era still going in enthusiast/museum hands, although I have no idea how much is original parts. But again, I stress, I'm in awe of the Voyagers continued operation where there no chance of hands-on maintenance :-)
To our knowledge no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred."
Well, duh! It's pretty rare for an "ongoing investigation" to have any conclusions. Even if some conclusions, tentative or otherwise have been reached, it's just as rare for them to be made public before the rest of the investigation is concluded, even to the subject of the investigation. And yes, I know, I'm aware of and fully support "innocent unless proven guilty", but Teslas statement seems to be attempting to put over the impression they have not done anything wrong and clearly are innocent since no one has said they have. Yet.
And what's with "wrongdoing"? No one cares id someone or a company does something "wrong". They care if it's illegal. "Wrongdoing" is PR speak for "breaking the law, but pretending we didn't"
Fiduciary duty isn't a myth, that's true. On the other hand, many people seem to think fiduciary duty is to raise the share price and profits as much as possible at the expense of everything else, which clearly isn't true. Fiduciary duty is about running the company responsibly, keeping an eye share price and profits in both the short and long terms, ie taking a hit now means the company survives into to the future instead of going for broke with "instant" profits at the expense of the company folding next year. It's a more complex duty that most people usually consider.
I think that's fair enough. IIRC, VisiCalc, probably the first ever mass market spreadsheet on the Apple ][ and similar devices of the time also started formulae with an = symbol.
Edit. I google to help my fading memory, and formulae started with + not =. Maybe it was some other spreadsheet I used in the DOS days, maybe Lotus 1-2-3 or SmartWare.
"Maybe this should be extended to a good few hours or a whole day."
There was a story on El Reg sometime over the last week or three saying MS or AWS was looking at replacing diesel gennys with larger battery banks for their backup UPS. Not a bad idea in the face of it, but a battery backup will have an extremely sharp cut-off point when the batteries run out, whereas a diesel genny can be refuelled indefinitely in the case of a prolonged outage.
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