Posts by Danny 4

Re: I missed a lot of fun.

If I remember correctly, the Fortran compiler would stop with an error if it found swear words being used in the source.

I'm holding out for USB5, to be referred to as...

Enough with these number things: USB Pentium.

Re: <strike>Acronyms</strike> Initialism

Abbreviation = Shortened word E.G. St, Dr etc

I always thought St and Dr were contractions but never bothered with the apostrophe.

Re: Validation Vs verification

modem or modern

I read the whole of Neuromancer thinking that Panther Modems was a cool name.

Re: Gateway Drug

dkTronics Rampack

I had a Memotech 16K Rampack. Seems they used the same solution of velcroing a shaped metal-cased rampack to the back of the '81. Very stable and ran cool.

Adding memory was the only way to make the ZX81 usable. Much like a the 16K vs 48K Spectrum.

Re: "Gigayears"...?

According to my dictionary gillion is a British term for thousand million. [giga- and million.] Though I've never seen it used anywhere. Time to re-introduce it?

(source: Chambers English Dictionary, 1990.)

Re: I'm not sure I understand

I think I'd want a car programmed with self-preservation.

A car that considers itself and its occupants expendable isn't much of a selling point.

gillion

Or, for us Brits gillion is also 10^9.

(Not one I've heard used but should El Reg reintroduce it to avoid this confusion?)

Source: Chambers English Dictionary (1990).

Re: Whatever next?

Urchins with Uzis

Re: xkcd

Me too.

Re: There's no legal requirement to sue as soon as possible

"There are two reasons to sue if someone stole your idea..."

You don't patent an idea. The patent is for an invention that implements that idea. At least, that's how it should work.

Re: L stands for ?

"Lozenge."

Loxley Lozenge.

Re: Here you go

Nearly, but that item's description pointedly fails to describe its display technology - I'm betting it's not OLED or it would harp on about it. Probably LCD with LED backlighting. (ugh)

All we need is a proper OLED monitor (and affordable too.)

Re: Is this Tesco's fault?

If your customer base is in the UK and the IP address come from somewhere else, then this is not likely to be your customer.

That's a parochial view you're adopting of how people use the Internet. Being able to order from overseas is v.handy. I ordered bottles of wine from Tesco for the folks while I was in Australia.

Re: Stop making me think about sex. It's irrelevant.

I was taught that their is the non-gender specific possessive form.

TeX/LaTeX

Why not give TeX or LaTeX a go? Edit using any text editor you choose - no obscure binary file formats. Multiplatform. Source code easily available. Powerful and portable. What's not to love?

Re: bad EPG data from Sky

@Lee D

I don't understand why you're sorry?

Did you read my post? The casual fault is bad EPG data. Yes, this should have been avoided by better software, both the software used by the EPG preparer - it should verify the data before committing to broadcast - and the firmware in the recorder should not trust external data even from non-belligerent sources. I reiterate, "to all involved: more testing, guys!"

Also, there appear to be a fault on your keyboard. It seems to be outputting occasional words in all-caps. Unless this is a wetware fault?

Re: The novel's pretty hard to adapt without bombing

"Hadn't heard of the Price take before, really want to see it."

This adaptation of the book can be found on archive.org. Look for The Last Man on Earth (1964).

Ferrite-core memory

That's what I was thinking. Ferrite-core (magnetic-core) memory was one of the earliest implementations for random-access memory. And gave us the term core memory.

I seem to remember many years ago, Thompson were investigating reading magnetic tape using a laser. It would have eliminated the rotating head on VCRs but DVD was already looming so it never appeared.

Put the two together...

Re: So we can disable the laugh track.

I'd like to disable the pointless pre-introductions and post-title-introductions in documentaries and just get on with the programme.

Re: First female Doctor

Kylie Minogue. Though she has been in one of the specials which could complicate things.

Re: giga

I've always pronounced giga with a J as in giant, gigantic etc. Isn't that the logical pronunciation?

Does anyone know the pronunciation for the Latin (or is it Greek?) source for these English words? Has the sound of the first G transmuted on its way into English?

Oh yeah, GIF is a hard G - isn't JIF a household cleaning product?

QI?

Wasn't this myth debunked on that fount of all knowledge, QI?

Re: I'm just waiting

@h3 "The only thing I am bothered about is focus follows mouse with no autoraise."

I'm with you on that point. It is so much more productive. Ditto for for Alt+mouse button for move, resize and raising. This should be the default behaviour on all desktops, including Windows and Macs which are unusable because of this. Also mouse middle-click for paste is something I really miss when I'm forced to use Windows.

one function per button

I disagree. My folks are from an era where equipment had a single function per button. They fully understand this type of UI. The modern style of menus with control a cursor with direction keys and OK is an utterly alien concept.

As an example they had an old JVC VCR whose timer could be set from the front of the machine itself. Mum would have no problem setting this. She now gets lost immediately having to navigating on-screen menus and gives up. She doesn't get the concept at all. I understand where she is coming from. Simple things should be simple and complex thing should be possible. It seems things are going to get more complicated and using less buttons.

As the article says, press the red button and OK to go straight to iPlayer. Or it could even be on its own iPlayer button... (Hopefully Mum will comprehend the subsequent iPlayer pages...)