Posts by DJV

Re: the circle completes

Don't forget the use of "its" instead of "it's".

Well, if they did that to me I'd ignore them - because my name isn't Paul!

And even more obviously:

Dear Southern Water (or something beginning with "wa" anyway)

"We take the protection of customer data very seriously" - um, no you don't.

"we rigorously test our systems" - your interpretation of "rgiorously" and mine are obviously poles apart.

"have strong measures in place to safeguard customer information" - I think this situation proves that is a complete lie.

I never saw a machine that would run Win9x faster than the contemporary version of NT

Unfortunately, I did - had to put it back to 98 in order to get it to do anything other than an impersonation of a lame snail. Can't remember the spec now as it was someone else's PC.

Re: When spellcheck goes wrong

Everyoen mkaes typos and mistooks! The way to handel it propaly is to click the "Tips and Corrections" link and tell El Reg directly - not to raven about it in teh comments!

Re: With great power comes great incompatibility

Something like these?

http://plugsocketmuseum.nl/Crater-plug1.html

http://plugsocketmuseum.nl/Fitall1.html

Re: "...CCT is regarded as a gold standard accreditation..."

Whenever I hear the term "gold standard" I can't help thinking of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

stupid then them

*than*

Re: Mercifully he only managed to KO his own screen

Yes, indeed. It's great to see him back but his computer based stuff will take a bit of getting used to until he finds his feet (or hands, more like)! Keep practising, Gary!

You are Tim Cook and I claim my free Apple Mac Pro Wheels Kit.

Re: But what would the measure be...

Who cares - I'd be too engrossed in admiring the plumage!

They may have got to the "get" but the "go " eluded them completely, so they went for the "gone" instead.

(Damn, I must stop taking those pills amanfrommars sent me...)

Re: a trip to Arundel castle

Ah, an eyesight test* AND some tea FTW!

* other castle eyesight tests are available

Re: Brace yourselves for some wheely bad puns in the comments

You "spoke" too soon.

That's similar to Commodore having holes punched through the motherboard on some models of the PET. The same motherboards were used for the 8K, 16K and 32K models and had 2 rows for where the RAM could be soldered in. The 8K and 16K models only needed to use one row so they punched holes through the second row to prevent people from upgrading them themselves! See here: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/43250/Commodore-PET-4008/

Re: Seeking sysadmins from other colonies to mate with

January 1st 2000 was probably the last time. All were at work (because the higher ups decreed it) and they were sitting around twiddling their thumbs wondering what to do with themselves. They'd already triple and quadruple checked all the fixes for the multitude of possible Y2K problems in the preceding months. So, after drinking all the beer and eating all the pizzas, their minds turned to fruitier things.

All their offspring will turn 20 in a couple of months.

Re: They don't build them like they used to

Another (possible urban legend) is the story that a new Rolls driver took a friend out for a drive in his new toy. At some point the friend asked to see under the bonnet so they stopped on the side of a road that had other traffic passing along it. The bonnet was duly opened for a couple of minutes for the friend to take a quick gander at the insides. Then the bonnet was dropped and the journey continued.

A few days later the driver received a call from Rolls Royce asking what the trouble was. When told he was only showing the friend the engine he was asked in no uncertain tones never to do that again in sight of others as RR didn't want the impression that their cars could ever break down.

The language is evolving in strange ways

The language is devolving in shit ways.

FTFY

Re: I'm shocked

Try rubber gloves...

Re: We're not done reading this kind of story, I'll wager.

Indeed, for a while I had an HP tower with the (slightly recessed) on/off switch right at the top of the front cover. Maybe HP thought it was safe there. They didn't reckon on one of my cats who decided the top of the computer was a potential bedding down place and her well-placed heel was ideal for hitting that button without any problem!

Re: Nested minecraft

Ah, turtles all the way down...

Re: Yeah but ...

My UK driving license photo is already facial recognition proof as I've still got a tatty old paper one from about 23 years ago (when I last moved house and had to update it). It doesn't actually have a photo as it wasn't a requirement back then. And, yes, I have checked with the DVLA, these old paper ones are still legal despite some people claiming otherwise!

Yeah, but, if they've got any sense, they'll switch off as soon as reality TV reaches them!

Re: Don't need it

To view (and remove) individual cookies in the latest Firefox hit the F12 button to bring up the Developer Tools when the open tab is the site you want to clear cookies from. Click the Storage tab and expand the Cookies option in the left hand menu. Click the relevant site name and all cookies for that site will be listed in the main pane. Select any you want to remove and hit the Delete key.

Re: Retroactive birth control

Not The Nine O'Clock News got there first!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUeQjDR1hOw

Re: I'm guessing this only affects Windows versions?

I've avoided MS Office completely on my own systems for over 10 years. I've seen too much pain inflicted on those who don't realise that reasonable alternatives exist out there, to ever want to go back.

Who's going to enforce it in the UK?

Mrs Trellis of North Wales, who will be writing a letter to David Attenborough fully putting the blame on him for bringing the dinosaurs back in that documentary.

It's when you see the "Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot" message that you REALLY need to start worrying!

Re: Oracle's Louis said: "That's all based on trust."

Yeah, and vice versa!

The only thing I'd definitely trust Oracle to do would be to shaft everyone else at the earliest available opportunity.

That reminds me of a tale I heard when on a course at the Unisys training building in Milton Keynes back in the late 1980s. Their Unisys (ex-Burroughs) B25 systems (which were actually rebadged Convergent Technology NGENs) were built as clip-together modules where a module might be a CPU unit, a hard disk unit, a 5.25 floppy drive unit etc. The idea was that you could start with a small system and built it up as required, even to the point of exchanging the CPU module for a more powerful one such as upgrading from a 286 to a 386 (well, it was the 1980s!).

Someone had apparently been sold a second hand system and couldn't understand why it couldn't read the floppies and phoned up Unisys for some support. The engineer trying to help had trouble understanding what was going on for a while as the customer claimed the floppy slot didn't have an open/close lever. Finally, it dawned on the engineer that the customer had been sold two units, none of which contained a floppy drive, and they were trying to insert the floppies into the slim gap between the two units they did have!

For those who have never seen these machines before there's a picture showing two units clipped together here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_B20. The slot the customer was shoving floppies into was the one directly below the centre of the monitor in that pic.