back to article Take CTRL! Shallow minds ponder the DEEP spectre of DARK CACHE

If in doubt, right-click. It’s a motto that has served me well and stood the test of time. Can’t locate a command under multiple sub-menus? Right-click – it’s probably in the contextual menu. Can’t remember what the command is called? Right-click – you’ll find it there. Have absolutely no idea what to do next? Right-click – it …

  1. Cipher

    A splinter group...

    ...of the deep cache clearers is the High Order of Snake Oil and Registry Cleaner Zealots.

    Do not, under any circumstance, make eye contact with these people.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: A splinter group...

      I gladly make eye contact with them. If they desire to discuss the matter in depth, they must meet me later in my office.

      Which is surrounded by a moat with laser wielding sharks.

      Assuming that they don't use the elevator, which was coded to deliver them straight into the furnace.

  2. heyrick Silver badge

    If in doubt, right-click.

    In a certain operating system that grew up with the knowledge of three mouse buttons, you will find the context menus hanging off the middle mouse button as the right button does useful actions related to the left button (so you don't need to bugger around with the keyboard to do simple actions like "unselect several of a selected group").

    Just sayin'.

    1. Wensleydale Cheese
      Happy

      Re: If in doubt, right-click.

      "In a certain operating system that grew up with the knowledge of three mouse buttons, you will find the context menus hanging off the middle mouse button"

      Chuckle.

      Shall we tell them that not all systems have a BIOS?

      Oops just did.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: If in doubt, right-click.

        That's twice better than an operating system that was originally developed with only one mouse button.

        Yet, amazingly, it became rather popular.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If in doubt, right-click.

        If there isn't a BIOS underpinning the 'system', then basically, the 'system' is the BIOS. Unless of course there isn't a 'system' at all. I don't think they need to know about that level.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If in doubt, right-click.

      And don't forget those of us that are left handed and have reversed the buttons actions.

  3. Novex
    Coat

    [ed: shurely shome mishtake, Dabbs?]

    Ah, so that's where Shean Connery got to after the failed Scottish independence bid, he's now the Editor at The Register...

    Coat...

    1. Ejit

      Re: [ed: shurely shome mishtake, Dabbs?]

      Failed?

      To quote Zhou Enlai: "Too early too say"

      The fracture of Great Britain requires Westminster to solve the West Lothian question. That project looks to be running to schedule.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: [ed: shurely shome mishtake, Dabbs?]

        "The fracture of Great Britain requires Westminster to solve the West Lothian question"

        The West Lothian Question is trivial: do away with Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and have a single united country where there is no possibility of anyone voting on things that only effect one part of it. It would make it impossible to ever again introduce a poll tax just in the areas where you don't have votes, just as a random example.

        And while we're at it, move the capital to Carlisle, York, or Newcastle on Tyne instead of being stuck in the bottom-right corner bloody miles from anywhere.

        1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: [ed: shurely shome mishtake, Dabbs?]

          "And while we're at it, move the capital to Carlisle, York, or Newcastle on Tyne instead of being stuck in the bottom-right corner bloody miles from anywhere."

          Why stop there? Move the capital every 15 years to the most impoverished urban area in the country. Let the gravy train succeed where inept "development policies" have failed. It won't cost the taxpayer much, since all the taxpayer needs to move are the MPs and immediate support staff. The lobbyists, political advisers and hangers-on can pay their own relocation expenses.

    2. Bloodbeastterror

      Re: [ed: shurely shome mishtake, Dabbs?]

      Not close, so no cigar... :-)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Deedes

      "The Eye also based its long-running editorial comment, "Shome mishtake shurely?", on Deedes' distinctive slur."

      Made famous by Private Eye, the last proper investigative UK newspaper/magazine.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Less useful is the ‘software secret’ – a helpful tip for achieving something nifty in your software but can only be done through a ridiculous sequence of unrelated actions.

    These secrets are often found by the family cat when it walks across the keyboard. They never share either. Bastards.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    De Bios, she is incompatible..

    Years ago - how many will be revealed by the context, I was tasked with installing Interactive Unix on a 386 PC. The idea of this was that Interactive Unix had a compatible X server available, and at the time X was seen to be Something That Will Happen When Unix Rule The World.

    Its only taken 20 years to happen, but hey, hope springs eternal...

    Except that Interactive Unix, would not install.

    So I phoned the UK agents, who were supposed to provide support, and after explaining exactly what was happening and where it was going into guru meditation mode, a dark brown subcontinent voice informed me that 'nothing could be done, the Bios, she is incompatible'.

    (In desperation I phoned the USA parent, where I was passed to the guy who write the installation code, who listened carefully, and to a background of clicking keys finally said 'ah. Got it, that's where its looking for a maths coprocessor. Do you have one?' I admitted that I didn't know, but thought not. 'And is your board jumpered to say that its has no coprocessor fitted?' I admitted I didn't know that either, but it ran Windows all right 'Try it with the jumper in the right place. I may change the installation code to detect when the processor isn't there when/if the board says it is')

    Anyway, or PC supplier popped in and said 'oh yeah, we dont jumper that because windows doesn't use the coprocessor anyway, but we can', and deftly moved some jumper. And Interactive Unix duly installed and after some hours of work an X in a stippled background duly appeared on the monitor.

    (I think it was some years before I actually saw X do any more than that, when someone ported the Motif window manager and you could click and bring up terminals).

    The phrase 'De BIOS, she is incompatible' became a standing joke with the PC supplier and our company.

    And returned to haunt me when after upgrading this old machine from 2 G RAM to 6G RAM, Linux reported only 3GB.

    A quick google on the actual board revealed that, in this case, the BIOS really was incompatible. But fortunately a BIOS upgrade was available.

    I am afraid the practice of shunting users off with incomprehensible gobbledegook goes back a long way.

    I am sure when the Greeks complained that the fire wasn't lighting, Prometheus insisted that they were using the wrong sort of leaves..."What do you mean, why couldn't I have given you matches?'.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

      I am intrigued. In what language would 'BIOS' be a feminine noun?

      1. John McCallum

        Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

        I think all of them when English is a second or third language.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

          BIOS: may have forced flashy exterior driven by fads, sometimes neurotic and erratic behaviour, menaces to quit on you, demands that new windows be installed before any useful work is allowed to be done, but still we love it when it's simple, no-frills, and opens up the options menu.

          Hmmmm...

        2. dan1980

          Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

          @John McCallum

          "I think all of them when English is a second or third language."

          Really? It has been my experience that non-native speakers are far more likely to replace 'it' with 'he', rather than 'she'.

          Even the very well-spoken ones. Hell, one of my foreign-born relatives uses 'he' when talking about women sometimes too!

      2. Fungus Bob
        Coat

        Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

        Its not BIOS, its BiOS - the version of BeOS that goes both ways!

        Mine's the reversible one...

    2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: De Bios, she is incompatible..

      Yeah, I've had similar ones to that. I typically can find the excrement in the statement and gladly shovel it back, reminding the idiot that not supporting a paid support product is a fundamental breach of contract.

      I've worked my way around the industry, from humping cables like the best cabling monkeys around (trust me, one has to have monkey capabilities in some industrial office ceilings), to desktop support, application support, some development, SA, NA, BOFH and now IA.

      I've had snake oil salesmen aplenty come to call, I have plenty more room in the local bog, should any more come to call. ;)

  6. Dave Bell

    Educating Help-Desks

    It is all too apparent to me that Help-desk staff are semi-literate in English, and have too-frequently failed the "English as she is spoke" course at the Bangalore Technical College (Est 2013), on whose long experience they depend.

    The standard fixes always involve an easily remedied fault with some other piece of software than that they are supporting, and require you to start some slow-running process that never seems to be resolved before a shift-change.

    They will then tell you that they have detected a problem with your Windows installation, even when you are running Linux. Should they want to know your computer's IP address you may safely tell them "127.0.0.1" whereupon hijinks have been known to ensue.

  7. Jungleland

    “Ah, but did you DEEP CLEAR your cache?”

    Well thanks to a certain TV show support staff are no longer able to ask if you have switched it off and on again. And as their pay seems to be rapidly approaching the "Would you like fries with that?" brigade, expect no improvement until the Cloud solves every problem known to Man.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: “Ah, but did you DEEP CLEAR your cache?”

      Shirley you don't mean the TV prog that does a couple of 'Deep Cleanse' on every show?

      So do you want to Snog, Marry or Avoid Mr Dabbs (with his 'deep cleansed cache') then?

    2. Irongut

      Re: “Ah, but did you DEEP CLEAR your cache?”

      My colleagues and I all happily continue to say "have you turned it off and on again?"

      But now we say it with a fake Irish accent.

  8. Tannin

    Control-C was around and had enjoyed its original meaning for several centuries before someone - doubtless Microsoft, seeing as we blame them for everything else - hijacked it as a for-the-dummies duplicate of Control-Insert. Where were you when computing got started? Didn't you ever use CPM?

    (Well, OK, probably not centuries.)

    1. Mage Silver badge

      CP/M applications

      Various pre MS applications used Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V for editing

      In windows Console the Copy & Paste is associated with Mark command in the title bar menu under edit. A handy way of copying out a column is to display the text in Console (which may or may not be actual 32 bit console or a DOS command shell in a VM) and Edit Mark, then paste in the Windows app.

      Actual MS DOS command line on real DOS without windows had little value in copy/paste as only one process and loading an application would trash any shell buffer usually.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: CP/M applications @Mage

        It pre-dates CP/M as well.

        I first came across Control-C as interrupt in the default settings for the UNIX Version 7 TTY driver (although it was 'soft', and could be redefined with the stty command), which would have been around 1979. Prior to that, the standard interrupt was communications Break. But I don't want to talk about the V6 TTY driver. That ugliness is best consigned to history.

        I'm fairly certain that Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used Control-C for interrupt in RSX and RSTS as well.

        Control-Z to suspend was a feature that came from BSD UNIX that introduced TTY job control sessions that allowed you to have backgrounded programs that you could switch between with the fg and bg commands.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Windows

      As I recall (and it was I while ago, so forgive me if I get the versions wrong) the early versions of Windows (up to and including 3.0) used the proper keyboard combinations for the clipboard because they followed IBM's CUA guidelines and IBM PCs of course had an IBM keyboard with Insert and Delete keys. Meanwhile, over on the Mac, no such keys existed and so the alternatives of Ctrl+C/X/V were devised.

      Then, starting around the time of Windows 3.1, Microsoft decided to use the Mac keystrokes in Windows. Fortunately, they continued to allow (and in most places still do) the CUA keystrokes. Unfortunately, since they haven't documented them for 20 years, it is increasingly common to find third-party apps written by clueless youngsters who don't know about them. (This latter point is particularly sad when said youngsters have probably never used a keyboard which doesn't have the proper keys.)

  9. Dr_N

    CTRL-C

    Very useful for aborting runs.

    Along with CTRL-Z for suspending runs.

    "Copy" you say?

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: CTRL-C

      OK, next time I walk into a room of users, I will ask for a show of hands:

      - who needs to copy and paste text?

      and

      - who needs to suspend or abort a run?

      1. dan1980

        Re: CTRL-C

        @Alistair Dabbs

        Perhaps the opening question would be:

        "Who uses the command prompt regularly?"

        One thing to consider, however, is that the command prompt came from a time when mouse-control was not really there - you just wouldn't be highlighting stuff to copy in the first place! You also wouldn't be multi-tasking the same way so you wouldn't be pasting in commands from the Internet or a document you have open on another screen!

        As it is now, you need to use your mouse to select the text anyway. Sure, it would be easier to do CTRL+C and CTRL+V but I, if I had to choose between having copy/paste shortcuts or a break shortcut (with the other being relegated to a context menu) then I would choose CTRL+C for break.

        Of course, one could just have it as a different combination, but that's outside of what's being discussed.

        1. Kiwi

          Re: CTRL-C

          ...then I would choose CTRL+C for break.

          Never gave it a thought before this thread.

          I often use a terminal, various things from remote server admin to simply being easier to do some things in a shell (come on MS, it's 2014, why doesn't Windows have a decent shell by default? (and yes, I do use "elevated command prompts" in Windows several times a day for repairs - there's certain things that are unavailable through a GUI)).

          Anyways... I hadn't thought about it, but for me using ^C there to abort something is automatic. I don't need to think about it. ^C is the obvious abort command. Has been since DOS days at least (IME). Can't recall ^Z for suspend, but I do recall using it in Dos often.. Or maybe in a compiler or something.

          Just like.. When editing text with a word processor, ^C is the shortcut for Copy and ^V for paste (although the use of V has never made sense other than close to C). Thank God Nano's writers haven't made ^C do something nasty :)

          And don't always need to use the mouse - ^A grabs everything :) (so often I'll do ^a ^C ALT-TAB ^V ^X (or ALT-F4) and a couple of spaces or enters depending on the program and the desired result.

          Just realised something else.. I've wasted my life with these bloody machines when I could've been out riding!

          1. Anonymous Custard

            Re: CTRL-C

            OK, next time I walk into a room of users, I will ask for a show of hands:

            I would say just ask if any of them know what a command prompt (or a terminal window) actually is, but I get the feeling the answer would be depressing.

          2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: CTRL-C

            "come on MS, it's 2014, why doesn't Windows have a decent shell by default?"

            Come on Kiwi, you know the answer to this. A decent shell would barf if you fed it a BAT or CMD script. Therefore, the only way you can get a decent shell onto Windows is if you leave CMD.EXE as the default and only use the decent alternative when the user specifically asks you to.

        2. Pookietoo

          Re: wouldn't be multi-tasking the same way

          No? ISTR switching between various screens using a serial terminal e.g. VT220. Or am I just thinking of Linux virtual TTYs?

          1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

            Re: wouldn't be multi-tasking the same way

            There were serial terminals that provided two or more serial ports allowing them to be connected to two different systems (or the same system twice!).

            Ones I came across included the HP2392, Falco 5220, and I believe that Wyse and Esprit also had models that did the same.

            But none of the normal terminals that I came across allowed direct cut-and-paste between different sessions, although I could not say that there were none that did.

            I should note that the AT&T BLIT, running on UNIX with layers backing it up allowed virtual terminals on the same machine using a RS232 or Starlan serial connection (there's a video copyrighted 1982 on YouTube), and did come with a mouse! AT&T also had a session manager called screen that allowed a process on a UNIX system to masquerade as several terminals, maintaining screen state, and allowed you to switch between them. This worked on any terminal with sufficient curses support.

            1. dan1980

              Re: wouldn't be multi-tasking the same way

              @Peter

              Sure, but that clearly isn't "multi-tasking the same way"

              : )

        3. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

          Re: CTRL-C @dan1980

          "the command prompt came from a time when mouse-control was not really there"

          No. It came from a time before mice were an option. I know that the mouse was first demonstrated to the world in 1968, but they did not appear on general purpose computers until the Xerox Star, AT&T Blit, Sun 1, and Apple Lisa, all in the early 1980's. The first PC mouse appears around 1983.

          'ordinary' terminals with CLI interfaces go back much further than that!

      2. Pookietoo

        Re: who needs to copy and paste text?

        That's left click and drag to select, middle click to paste - I often try to do this with Windows too ... apparently AutoclipX provides a good imitation of the behaviour, and other stuff besides, but I've not tried it yet.

  10. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    Try right-clicking in the Visual Studio editor. That's proof that you can overdo a good idea :-/

  11. John 110

    CTRL-C in Healthcare computing

    In Certain Places in our Lab system, pressing CTRL-C will reliably dump you at a : prompt, whereby a variety of keys can be pressed (the only useful one to most of our users being M to take them back to a menu). Of course, users being users, most of them do Ctrl-Alt-Del and end the terminal task and start again...

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: CTRL-C in Healthcare computing

      Leave it to Microsoft to design an operating system so dense and uncontrollable that one has to issue a non-maskable interrupt to get its attention.

      As for the clear your cache, that gets me every time. For heaven's sake, the bloody proxy doesn't need to have its cache cleared each and every time, the browser and especially, the damnable chimpanzee of a coder should have it coded in.

      meta has been around for a rather long time now.

      Like <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" /> or <meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache" />.

      I keep getting the "clear your cache" when dealing with shitrix.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: CTRL-C in Healthcare computing

        "Leave it to Microsoft to design an operating system so dense and uncontrollable that one has to issue a non-maskable interrupt to get its attention."

        That's a little unfair. I think IBM were responsible for the original PC hardware and its BIOS, and if you know how to shoehorn a proper OS into 16K RAM (or whatever IBM's minimum spec for the original PC was), then you are almost certainly also old enough to know that IBM under-spec'ed the PC intentionally, so it really *was* IBM's fault.

  12. Kubla Cant

    Cache

    I know about the cache control meta tags and I know about F5 and Ctrl-F5. But I've still found plenty of occasions when IE has had to be restarted to force it to forget about a CSS or script file that it has sqirrelled away somewhere.

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