Posts by John Brown (no body)

DELTREE didn't appear until MSDOS 6.0. Pah, kids today! Don't know they're born. In my day, you had to go into right to bottom of the tree and start doing DEL *.* one directory at a time, working your way back to the top before you could cause that much damage. And do they believe you? 'course not!

Now git orf ma lawn!

"Didn't PCTools have an undelete function?"

If you caught it before the file space got overwritten, you could easily undelete in MSDOS. The action the OS took to delete a file was simply to set the high bit of the first character of the filename so it was pretty simple to undelete by just resetting that bit back low. At a pinch, you could do it with DEBUG in the root directory. It could be a bit more tricky to do so in sub-directories, so one of the many undelete tools that could identify and follow the linked list to sub-dirs was a lot simpler.

Re: Ah!

Same here. I first used it on 8-bit CP/M and stuck with it through CP/M-86 and MS-DOS until that abomination of WordStar 2000 came along and it's bastard cousin WS1512 for the Amstrad PC1512 :-)

Re: "to screw up completely requires a computer..."

...except when you're in a hurry, screw up and then "lesson has been learned". Bets practice is great when you have the time, but we've all been pressured into getting the job done NOW!!!!!

" if a 1 person developer stops developing it because they die, goes to prison or whatever."

Wasn't the supa dupa new filesystem that was going to take over Linux...until the dev murdered his wife and went to prison? (Vague memories from a few years back)

Re: Elephant in the room

...and the other elephant in the room is...cloud vendors hosting "solutions". At least if you bought the install media, if the company goes under, you still have the software installed and running. If the cloudy instance evaporates, you're screwed NOW!

I wondered if part of the reason is that open source is pretty much licenced "as-is" while commercial stuff is paid for and may have legal implications if a fix is pushed out without checking it isn't going to bork your customers. Then I remembered MS updates, especially with regard to printers.

Re: What is geordie for Bork?

On the other hand, Geordie is home to many loan words, some bastardised, from the Viking invasions, so bork fits right in :-)

Also, just for clarification, that sign isn't related to mainline trains nor "Central Station Platform 1" as non-locals may know it. That would be the one above ground. The sign relates to the Metro system which is underground inside the City. There have been no mainline trains to South Shields since the Metro was built about 40 years ago. The above ground station has 12 platforms and needs numbers. The underground Metro station only has two platforms and I'm not sure they are actually numbered.

You sure it wasn't a bowl of Petunias, who's last thought before impact was "Oh no, not again!"

Re: Relieved

Judging by the coverage on CNN, there was a definite lean towards "the sky is falling" in the US media.

Re: failure to yield the right of way to the car

Yes, many driving instructors are good with memorable homilies. Mine told me "It's a speed LIMIT, not a speed TARGET"

Re: Is the market voting with its feet?

"They ought to be able to train a new high-level / governor AI to combine mapping data and driver / accident data to instruct the low-level AI that handles realtime driving about where to be extra cautious."

Unless they start buying up accident statistics databases from everywhere which bothers to keep them, then Tesla can only act after the fact. ie people continue to get injured or die in the process of building that new database

Re: Is the market voting with its feet?

"The road can be clear as far as a truck driver can see but that is not far enough to complete crossing the road before an unseen car travelling at the speed limit can arrive at the junction. "

So it's really a "blind" junction. Maybe there should be a warning sign or drop in speed limit at that point. Locals won't care, strangers may slow down and Teslas on "autopilot" should recognise and adhere to the speed limit when it either appears on the GPS map or the cameras "see" the road signs.

"Pizza should have thin, freshly stretched dough base"

I prefer the thicker base that's been allowed to rise a bit. The thin crust stuff feels like I've been short changed!

Re: Not a security issue if not online

The article refers to "a well-known cheese-and-tomato bread slinger" and judging by the colour scheme on the display, it's Dominos. You can get your bottom dollar that the the video menu is managed and updated by head office and the local "manager" has no control over the menu, the prices or the special offers.

It's be on the same network as the tills and ordering system with access back to head office. This is just the sort of thing hackers look for. Low hanging fruit connected to the crown jewels.

Re: "Living Without Electricity" - Royal Academy of Engineering, 2016

"And see what precautions YOU can take, because Westminster and the corporates and their low-budget outsourcers sure as hell aren't going to bother."

Not forgetting the closure of all the coal fired power stations. Plans to close all "fossil fuel" generation over time. Lack of new nuclear power as older nukes are shut down. The fact that wind is less likely at the time of year people need heating and the sun doesn't shine much and there's still little to no storage for any renewables. It ain't all gonna work from electric cars plugged into a "smart" grid.

Re: Lack of mains

Is there not a legal requirement for this enshrined in law too? Has that law been adjusted or repealed? Or am I just dreaming?

Re: Lack of mains

"This is a serious issue. When there are floods, gales or other interruptions to power you wont even be able to report it. What a STUPID STUPID STUPID idea. What BONE HEADED ARSE WIPE didnt think it thtough?"

"Only a very small number of customer that we are aware of were affected, it really wasn't a much of on an incident at all, but we do apologise for any inconvenience suffered by the tiny minority of customers who reported being under 3m of sewage infested water at the time"

Re: Everyone else?

Not having a mobile phone doesn't preclude communicating with others. It just stops you communicating remotely with people when you are not at home.

Re: Perhaps

"However, I have my router, server, network switch and DECT base-station on a UPS so I have some up-time."

And even that is assuming that everything up to and including the exchange which may be affected by the power cut also has a working UPS with reasonably decent batteries in them. Your UPS isn't going to be much help if the green box down the road last had it's batteries changed 5 years ago and now only has a 5 minute battery life :-)

Re: "to connect back to its old socket and power the home PSTN network"

"You just may need to check how many REN it is capable of, especially if you have some old equipment you wish to be able to keep on using."

OMG! You mean my fax might not work? How will I keep in touch with Aunty Gerty??!!!?!?!?

Re: Safari and Internet Explorer

"No, the ONLY reason for disallowing alternative rendering engines is their "nothing that competes with something we do" policy - which personally I think is anti-competitive."

Especially when an app does something Apple doesn't do which they later decide to do, and only then kick out the competing apps based on their non-compete clause.

Re: Safari and Internet Explorer

"How does Apple get away with restricting competitive web browsers on the iOS platform?"

Market share. Over recent years, it's been other countries and/or the EU that has been chipping away at big IT companies bending of rules, enforcing of onerous contract terms, snaffling of personal data etc. Those actions outside of the US trickle back to the US, helping the US consumers too, over time. But in Apples case, they are not the biggest platform in much of the rest of the world and so are less of an issue. People can and do choose other non-Apple platforms in places other than the USA and so Apple are not even close to a monopoly there while in the US, they getting there.

iOS is 60% in US, 51% UK, 30% EU and 10% Asia.

(The 51% UK market share surprised me. I'd not realised they'd grown so much here! Must be all the free iPads getting handed out in schools and universities.)

Re: Faceplant

And there's absolutely nothing on their website that says who they are or where they are in the world. From the point of view of their website, it could be two spotty teenagers operating from a bedroom, or tiny subsidiary of a huge corp.

I'm sure others have already dug into it and can enlighten us as to who they are and where they are based, but Muse Group seem to be trying to keep that info from the casual reader/user.

Re: @ScissorHands - opt in issue solving

...or when you click the button, it tells you the programme wasn't complied with debug mode switched on and therefore the bug report can't be submitted without symbols tables and such like.

Re: Use a random generated ID!

"Modify the script used to open Audacity. Ate each new session it would remove the old ID and generate a new one. Let them sort this telemetry..."

Based on what they claim they need the telemetry for, this would mostly work. The only downside for them would be the apparent increase in numbers of users. They still get the bug reports. Still get the numbers of times various filters are used etc. They'd just not be able to tie filter usage to heavy users. Of course, using Google, there may well be other fingerprinting going on outside of Audacity but through other Google interactions which ties all those phantom UUIDs back to you.

Re: Rule 34

...in a pineapple ring? Oooerrr missus!

Re: There may be regional differences to consider...

But what about jam/cream/jam eh? eh? eh?

Re: There may be regional differences to consider...

...and also why I've always thought that there's not a lot of difference between clotted cream and unsalted butter, at least when used with scones.

It just needs a glass to put the tomato juice in. Maybe a touch of salt and some non-vegan Worcestershire sauce to taste.

Re: A law unto themselves.

Yeah, look how long it took them to ratify the Berne convention, pretty much the last to the party, and now they are probably the worlds strongest proponents of international copyright. Or so a little mouse tells me.