Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Boat/Car?

I remember taking a trip (?voyage) in a DUKW much earlier than that - probably with the original khaki paint. It was probably from Scarborough or Brid.

Re: Applications

A Cunning Plan 9?

BTW is there any history available about the naming - apart from it being the name of allegedly the worst SciFi movie ever made? Is it a coincidence that the Roman numeral version of 9 is ix?

Re: As I wrote about something else a month or so ago ...

\it depends on what you mean by "everyone". Back in the '80s ad '90s a lot of small businesses ran on the likes of NCR Towers, MIPS and later SCO on various PC-based servers. The users were connected by dumb terminals or terminal emulation on PCs and completely unaware of what lay beneath as all they saw were their task-specific applications and some sort of menu. It put a multiuser system within reach of everyone who was a small business owner. That may not be literally "everyone" but then not everyone uses MacOS either.

Re: speaking of usb

"(wtf called ? circular mouse & kyb plugs)"

The big ones - c 1cm dia - were DIN, the smaller generally called PS2 because they were either introduced by IBM for PS2s or at least they came into use about that time.

To be fair, it's probably easier than plugging it into a USB A socket.

Re: The RJ family...

"But then maybe, after all, it has kept a good few of us in a job over the years..."

And anything that does that can't be all that bad.

Re: bullshit detected

"you just need to use your hammer some more"

You may need to use a chisel instead. Chisels make good wedges to take up the slack.

Idiots, of course, don't know it's bad management so the behaviour persists.

Re: A future who me?

I'm also an old person who remembers lighting as being a major source of energy consumption but also realises the consumption served a purpose. That last bit is an important principle to grasp for those who wish to save energy. The smart way to do it is to work out how to serve the same purpose more efficiently.

Re: A little knowledge

You should have told them to add some useful indexes. Either that or run UPDATE STATISTICS.

Re: Delusional narcissist

"Highest office he could theoretically obtain is Speaker of the House."

But isn't Speaker just two sudden deaths away from becoming POTUS?

Re: Delusional narcissist

"Disney and IBM buy it, and flounce off from X in a huff. Partly. But they still have accounts there because that's where the eyeballs are."

I don't have an account on any of the usual suspects so I don't know if they're still posting anything. However a quick glance at IBM's front page shows no blue bird there. In fact there are no social media links there at all and my general impression is that far fewer big name sites nowadays don't have any. I think it's getting to the point where marketing departments are starting to regard the whole mess as toxic and best avoided.

Re: Delusional narcissist

But as per your previous post, they'll probably do that to stop someone else grabbing it. Peanuts compared to the hassle of dealing with the possible consequences of not doing.

Re: more ads means more users ????????

And squeezed in between are the few he really needs who are now demanding money up-front.

Re: Delusional narcissist

The whole world minus one will know who killed the company.

The only surprising thing is that it hasn't gone already.

Re: Main B Bus undervolt

A manager from years back said one of his former managers had a set of phrases to describe different grades of oopsies. The top grade was "Houston, we have a problem".

Re: Measure twice, cut once.

An ex-colleague's preferred weapon was a steel ruler slapped down on the bench.

Re: Elliott

"a company I haven't even heard of before."

For a while they owned the ex-BBC transmitter network in the UK after the British Broadcasting Corporation decided it didn't want to do any actual broadcasting.*

* Quite reasonable. It meant they had to employ men who hadn't been to Oxbridge and who wore brown overalls with pens in their breast pockets. What was worse, most of it was outside London.