* Posts by GerryMC

70 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2011

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Bletchley Park Trust can’t crack COVID-caused revenue slump without losing staff

GerryMC

Re: This is the theme park isn't it?

I can't remember seeing any actors (other than in a film clip) when I was there two years ago. Unfortunately I couldn't schedule it to visit TNMOC on one of the days that it was fully open, only got to see the Colossus and Heath Robinson, still worth it .

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks

GerryMC

Re: King's Quest

Or OS/2 + NetWare networking stack. IIRC was something like 50 diskettes.

Microsoft wants to show enterprises that Edge means business, rather than the thing you use to download Chrome

GerryMC

Re: Don't shoot - I quite like Edge !

Just use a browser I have always disliked? Why should I.

Mind you FF seems to be trying to copy the "features" of the Chrome UI I dislike.

GerryMC

Don't know about GPU changes, but I replaced my motherboard and CPU (Intel -> AMD), and Windows complained, but gave me an option to say that there had been hardware changes.

You're testing them wrong: Whiteboard coding interviews are 'anti-women psychological stress examinations'

GerryMC

Hopefully they leave you to fix things, rather than rambling away on a conference call.

In nearly thirty years of software development, I can't remember having that sort of situation.

Breaking virus lockdown rules, suing officials, threatening staff, raging on Twitter. Just Elon Musk things

GerryMC

Re: Bill Gates is Evil

I think you are missing the joke or troll icon. At least I hope you are.

Reg readers have not one, but TWO teams in Folding@home top 1,000 as virus-bothering network hits 2.4 exa-FLOPS

GerryMC

It's getting into autumn here in Kiwiland, and we've had our first couple of cooler days, so my office (more what would be called a box room in the UK, but a bit larger. Was part of a garage I think) was a bit cool. I have cranked F@H up to max on my personal machine so it pumps warm air over my feet as I work on my employers laptop.

Nice even temperature, using a fan heater is too much heat, and too noisy.

All the IT ladies (all the IT ladies), all the IT ladies (all the IT ladies), now put your hands up! Oh, still not many here

GerryMC

I don't know about CS degrees (I don't have one), but when I started working with Computers in the 80s, there seemed to be as many young female programmers as there were young male programmers. I agree something happened to put women off - Possibly the "rise" of the Nerd Culture stereotype?

Should we be blaming "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Sixteen Candles" et al?

25 years of Delphi and no Oracle in sight: Not a Visual Basic killer but hard to kill

GerryMC

Re: Still use Delphi

of course I can also do begin<enter>, and it will fill in the end, but habits...

GerryMC

Re: Still use Delphi

"these days Delpih does feel a bit dated and verbose with its declarations sections and begins and ends"

As of the latest Delphi 10.3 Rio, variables can be declared in line (at last!). It also supports type-inference, which is very useful when using Generics.

I've not used Python in anger, but I find typing begin/end (actually beCtrl+j <enter>) no slower than { } (shift-[ shift-])

And it is much easier to "read aloud"

GerryMC

Re: the question is why Delphi failed to sweep up more of the Windows development market

Pointers to functions has been a feature of Delphi since version 1. They were added to allow the implementation of event handlers

Like other tech giants, Netflix gets govt takedown demands – and impressively, none of them involve Adam Sandler

GerryMC

Six Months on a Leaky Boat was by Split Enz, not Crowded House. Mind you both bands featured Neil Finn

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

GerryMC

Re: Pedant alert

New Zealand also has the straight red to green transition, as has as far back as I remember (1960s), when almost all cars were manual transmission.

Maybe we bought our gear from the USA.

Microsoft Notepad: If it ain't broke, shove it in the Store, then break it?

GerryMC

Re: F*ck Microsoft Notepad,

Not much use when the server is a VM on AWS, in another country.

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

GerryMC

Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

*Someone * is being a bit thick here. Not the regular readers however.

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

GerryMC

Ballmer Peak?

https://xkcd.com/323/

UK code breakers drop Bombe, Enigma and Typex simulators onto the web for all to try

GerryMC
Coat

You forgot your coat...

RIP Dr Peuto, Zilog and Sun's bright SPARC

GerryMC

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

While I never personally used one, there were people in my first real job who did - it was easier to quickly change a parameter card in a stack than open a text editor, edit a file, and send the file to the mainframe.

They were used for batch control on an ICL29 series, but running the old ICL1900 OS (rewrite of old Assembler code in COBOL was under way to run under VME).

I wrote a simple parameter substitution program (replace %A - %Z) with appropriate input on a screen, that almost put paid to them.

We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD

GerryMC

Re: Ah, but ...

It is. His real initials (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

Poor people should get slower internet speeds, American ISPs tell FCC

GerryMC

I'm beginning to think the US ISPs have realised that when the next lot of LEO broadband satellites (StarLink, OneWeb etc) come on line, they will be unable to compete. As a result they are trying to milk as much as possible from under-developed infrastructure while they still can.

Huawei gets the Kiwi 'yeah nah'* as NZ joins the Chinese kit-ban club

GerryMC

Re: 5 eyes can't see into Huawei?

The other two contenders for the kit are Nokia Networks and Ericsson, so not American or UK kit. But they may still be compromised.

Reverse Ferret! Forget what we told you – the iPad isn't really for work

GerryMC

Re: Horses for courses

i7 16GB Laptop with docking station connected to 2x24" screens

only take it home if on call (paid), or planning to work from home (alas, 1x23" screen)

I only use the laptop keyboard in meetings. I cannot use a touchpad, just no...

Old HP keyboard at work, Logitech gaming KB and mouse at home

Proper tower for home gaming etc

Tablet for browsing on the couch

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

GerryMC

Re: Just go Linux

OK, I will get Embarcadero to create a Linux version of the Delphi IDE, rewrite a large ERP type system to run on Linux, and get all of the thousands of users to change to Linux as well.

Oh, and move to LibreOffice or whatever it is called now.

Should only take a few years and millions of dollars.

30-up: You know what? Those really weren't the days

GerryMC

Re: "Ooff, that hurt. Citation please."

Embarcadero have dropped the XEn monikers, new versions are all "Delphi 10.n CityName"

Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin's wiring design

GerryMC

Re: Plot twist? What plot twist?

In NZ, quite happily from the normal 240v single phase on a 20? amp circuit. Ovens are usually on a 32 amp breaker. (Actually IIRC it a 4.2kw unit)

We only use one voltage for household stuff here.

Unless you have a machine shop in the basement

Crooks swipe plutonium, cesium from US govt nuke wranglers' car. And yes, it's still missing

GerryMC

Re: That dirty yard in the neighbourhood

Not the bananas?

Men are officially the worst… top-level domain

GerryMC

Re: I'm feeling left out

There are a few NZ businesses using the .kiwi TLD created in 2014, but there is really no real need for it - we survived with various second level domains under .nz for over 20 years.

What most people think it looks like when you change router's admin password, apparently

GerryMC

Re: At the risk of becoming tiresome...

Similar to my router. However there is one mitigating factor - to even attempt login as administrator on the router, I need to connect to it.

This requires either plugging into the box, or a WiFi connection. If some achieves this, they are already able to do a great deal of damage.

This off course assumes that the default WiFi password isn't daft

Skype for Business has nasty habit of closing down… for business

GerryMC

Re: Why are people still on 32-bit windows

Also, many 32bit Windows apps want to interact with Office apps via OLE/ActiveX. This doesn't work if Office is 64bit

Airbus plans beds in passenger plane cargo holds

GerryMC

Re: Glossing a commercial turd

I recently read elsewhere something from Qantas discussing this idea. The point is that to do the ultra long. non stop Sydney to London routes, they may have to reduce the amount of freight that they carry to reduce weight.

As there is less freight, some of the cargo hold will be unused, so they can use it for walking cargo.

Too many bricks in the wall? Lego slashes inventory

GerryMC

Re: ...

Yeah, I'm 54 and recently got the Saturn V for the same reason. It wasn't easy to come by in NZ, they were selling out very quickly and Lego charges $NZ70 for delivery to NZ, so I didn't want to buy direct.

And I "had" to let my 11 y.o. help... (SWMBO)

GerryMC

Re: Lego...

"specialized, much too complicated pieces."

After recently building the Saturn V kit, I can say there are few custom pieces involved. As far as I can see the only custom ones are the lettering (USA/United States) and American flag bricks.

It even uses some 4x2 pieces. However some of the bits are complicated!

And.., Castle! Luxury. All we had were standard 4x2, 2x2 etc, along with some doors and windows, and some roof pieces.

National Museum of Computing rattles the bucket: Help shift war-winning proto-puter

GerryMC

So Bletchley Towers then?

Oddly enough, I will be on-route to a theme park! (and beyond to what my wife thinks is the "real" part of England, but then, she speaks with an accent exceedingly rare)

GerryMC

OK, interesting to note the behaviour of the BPT.

I'm visiting the UK later this year - in your summer, and will be heading up the M1. For a fan of the history of Bletchley (and long time Programmer) is it worth visiting BP, or should I just stick to TNMOC?

It will be on a Monday or Tuesday at the end of June, so only the Colossus Galleries will be open (or is different in Summer?)

Thanks

Gerry

Until last week, you could pwn KDE Linux desktop with a USB stick

GerryMC

"these sorts of vulnerabilities get found faster in Windows, right?"

Yes, by the NSA

Wileyfox goes TITSUP*: Smartmobe maker calls in the administrators

GerryMC

Re: A pity

Re Moto G5 plus -

Hmm - I (just) got the 1 November 2017 security patch. Was on August up to then.

New Zealand joins the Space Race

GerryMC

Re: Cool...

"I assume New Zealand is even closer to equatorial launch"

Not on your nelly. The launch site is 39degrees from the Equator at https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/39%C2%B015'41.5%22S+177%C2%B051'57.2%22E/@-39.1327661,178.2181487,7.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-39.261514!4d177.86588

GerryMC

The Mahia Penisula is in the middle (on a north/south axis) of the North Island, between Gisborne and Napier. not in the Far North (Northland). Same reasons though.

I do wonder if North Queensland woud have some suitable sites, or would the risks to the Great Barrier Reef be too much?

Australia won't prescribe its national broadband network a high-fibre diet

GerryMC

In practice, the Chorus techs sometimes combine the first and second visit (at least they did when I was connected last week). I have gone from 4.8/0.8 Mbps to 100/20Mps!

Also, there are a hell of a lot of Chrous vans in the area at the moment - most of a suburb was connected just before Christmas.

Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious

GerryMC

Re: My keyboard stupidity.

Had this recently on my wife's laptop. Of course, being a laptop it wasn't obvious how to toggle it - or how it got turned on in the first place.

New battery boffinry could 'triple range' of electric vehicles

GerryMC

Re: How many battery "breakthroughs" is that this year?

Would you prefer car that can do half the range or the one that goes further but literally effectively has 500Kg of TNT under your ass ?

FTFY

Unless you mean that you do carry half a tonne of TNT with you. In which case the FBI or MI5 or equivalent may want a word with you...

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

GerryMC

Re: Poor Delphi....

I suspect it is {} language developers maintaining old applications, and just not really getting it. And misplaced snobbery.

nbn™'s problems were known – in 2008, a year before its birth

GerryMC

Re: NZ vs Aus

Strictly speaking, TelecomNZ wern't forced to split up. They just wouldn't have been allowed to be involved in the subsidised fibre rollout if they didn't. Government pays, Chorus (or other provider) own the fibre.

GerryMC

Re: NZ vs Aus

If only it was done a bit quicker. I've been stuck with a crappy ADSL (5Mbps) link for nearly three years. No VDSL or cable, finally due in December

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third...

GerryMC

Re: You lost my sympathy right here:

"Two, what if your home has hard water, making it rather hard to make a good cup of coffee at home?"

My coffee maker has a Water Softener Filter widget - totally pointless where I live, took me a while to figure out what it was for.

SpaceX wows world with a ho-hum launch of a reused rocket, landing it on a tiny boring barge

GerryMC

So, is it like the Ship of Theseus (or Trigger's Broom), or is still "mainly" the same booster?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

AWS's S3 outage was so bad Amazon couldn't get into its own dashboard to warn the world

GerryMC

Re: @Phil Kingston

We used to have these things called ini files (or config files or whatever) that you could COPY from one machine to another. Later on, ou could even put them onto cloudy storage if you needed them elsewhere and couldn't be arsed carrying a thumb drive.

Who do you want to be Who? VOTE for the BBC's next Time Lord

GerryMC

Re: Alternative

Inconceivable!

We're going to have to start making changes or the adults will do it for us

GerryMC

Re: Ok, so...

Sepend on the language of course. a 4 space indent in Pascal looks hideous. 2 in C# looks bonkers. Tabs are for people who can't make up their mind.

(Note: using tabs is almost unheard of in my most common language (Delphi). I know of no third party code, FOSS or commercial that uses them). Perhaps I should use the troll icon?

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

GerryMC

Re: Now That Bernie is Out....

Um.. Isn't being ambitious pretty much a prerequisite for anyone to run for POTUS?

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