unixman

Here's a much better rugby video LYNX - Rules to Rugby. It's an Australian/New Zealand TV ad but I doubt that we'll see it here in Blighty. The Advertising Standards Bureau determined that the ad breaches section Section 2.1 of the code (The Board considered that the advertisement depicts the women as sexual objects) but did not ban it, as it is shown after the watershed.

TRS-80 Model III, Commodore 64, Zenith ZP500, Altair 8800, DEC PDP 11, IBM 360, Apple G4, etc. I've probably worked on almost every computer featured, certainly these that I could identify. I'll try and id the rest at some point. I wonder where they found them all?

In schools, I've pulled pencils out of CD drives quite regularly. Recently I pulled a green sandwich (nice!) from a PC - I think it had been there a long time. It came complete with an empty pop bottle, which is probably better than a can. Back in my big iron days, I visited a site that had an ants nest in one of the disk drives. (They look a bit like this http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/25/Bletchley/100_1750.jpg) This wouldn't have been too bad, except one of the little buggers decided to go for a walk across the disk platters and it completely wrecked it. The strangest support call I ever took went like this, which was at 8:30am. Me: "Good morning, xxxx company". Client: "Hello, it's Paul yyyy here, we've got a bir of a problem with our machine." Me: "OK, what's happening". Client: "It's covered in cement". Me: "Ha, ha, come on pull the other one". Client; "No, it REALLY is covered in cement". Me: "Well what am I supposed to do, bring a jack hammer?". Client: "We just need you to be here, when the insurance company arrives". What happened was, builders were pumping concrete at the building site next door to our client's offices. Back then (15 years ago) 'elf & safety was just about non-existent and most of these concrete pumping company's ran on a shoe string budget and maintenance was poor. Something clogged one of the hoses, which exploded and the liquid cement took out the windows of our clients office. Luckily there was nobody in the building as it was early morning.

Hylomar M or Loctite Master Gasket. Just squeeze it on.

Technologizer 15 years on and most of what they say is still true.

Here you go! ABBOT TANK SELF PROPELLED GUN EX MOD ROAD REGISTERED seems quite a reasonable price, cheaper than many cars.

You've got to laugh The Register

"This week is remarkable for two 10-year computing anniversaries: that of the Apple iPod and of Microsoft's Windows XP." The Register There are still a lot of company's that run XP and will continue to do so for a long time. A year or so ago, I did some work for a multi-million pound organisation that still ran Windows 2000 on all the desktops. There was no business case for the change, so they stuck with it. The contract was to implement some legislative changes which meant I upgrade to Windows XP. The existing hardware wouldn't run Windows Vista or 7 and replacing all the PCs was out of the question. Why replace good hardware, reliable hardware just to run a new o/s which will give them no business benefits? I can see XP hanging around for many years yet, despite M$'s efforts to kill it off.

The first launch of Galileo aboard Soyuz is at about 11:30am today. Watch the launch live at Arianespace - VideoCorner > Livestream video coverage All previous Soyuz launches have been from Baikonur and Plesetsk; this is the first one from French Guiana at the new launch complex. Sadly the weather in Kourou is cloudy, so the view may not be the best. I watch the launch webcasts regularly and they are usually very well presented.

Reclaiming the gold from computers isn't a new idea. Most of the big irons especially IBMs contained large amounts of gold and other precious metals and they were often wrecked for the content at the end of their lives. This is why there are so few 1960's machines such as the IBM System/360s around. These machines typically occupied an entire room and the amount of gold was quite significant.

Another pioneer has gone to the big computer room in the sky : The Register Boing Boing His contribution to changing the face of IT cannot be under-estimated. Before Unix, you couldn't sit down at any computer and drive it. If cut your teeth on Big Blue (like me) and changed to an ICL firm (which I did), you had to learn to drive all over again. It's all too easy these days, sit down at a box and anybody can drive it.

I too use the phonetic alphabet when on the phone (err don't we all?). I was on the blower to the LEA the other day and I needed to read out a ridiculously long licence code to them, so I used the phonetic alphabet. About 1/2 way through, their techie said "Can you please use the phonetic alphabet?" "Err, I did", said I. "No, I meant just say the letters." (sheeesh!) OK, so I did and of course, when it didn't work, we then had to go though "was that C or B in the 7th position?", "X or S in the 19th?", etc. As to the original question, I'd say zed as in "A Zed and two noughts" (a very strange film). I wonder how they said that title in the USA? Zee-ed and two zeros?

Your Browser Matters Billy boy is trying to spread more FUD by rating your web browser's "security" rating. My results are (all tested on windows) Opera - We can't give you a score for your browser SeaMonkey 2.0.13 - We can't give you a score for your browser Konqueror 4.7.0 - We can't give you a score for your browser (are you starting to detect a theme?) Safari 5.0.4 - We can't give you a score for your browser Lynx - We can't give you a score for your browser Firefox 7.0 - 2/4 Chrome - 2.5/4 IE7 - 1/4 IE8 - 3/4 Apparently, if you test it on IE9 you get a perfect 4/4, but I haven't bothered to download IE9 yet. However, Opera pretending to be IE - 4/4 - Result! My browser passes the Microsoft test - so I'm safe after all.

here you go Linux Mint Forums • View topic - [solved] Realtek RTL8191/8192SE Wireless Driver!

This one has been running for over 30 years Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit It was featured in a program on Channel 5 about the LHR POD a few weeks ago.

You don't need a degee to work in IT either - Don't bother with that degree, say IT pros ? The Register I wish I had known that 35 years ago!

You could always make your own Periodic Table of The Elements Cross Stitch or an edible version Cookie Periodic Table aka. "The Periodic Table of Aliments"

blocked here in Brum - "The URL is listed under categories (Humor/Comics, Provocative Attire, Blogs/Wiki)," - no shit Sherlock!

As a Linux user, it's single click for me. Never understood this double click nonsense.

I took my Kia Picanto in for it's first service a few months ago. The Kia dealer wanted £190 + parts and the local mechanic £60 without parts. I supplied the genuine Kia parts (cost £8.90) and saved myself £120. I didn't get the "free" wash & vac though, which the Kia dealer would have done; that's one expensive wash. I had to use genuine parts to preserve the 7 year warranty, although I doubt pattern parts would have been much cheaper. Speaking of expensive cars, I found this on the BBC website BBC News - Gainsborough company claims smallest car title It costs a mere £3000 more than my Kia, although I did take advantage of the scrappage scheme when I got it.

BBC News - Can Whitehall open up to open source? The spreadsheet is interesting!

Sci-fi tech that came true

This is all the tools I've ever needed For Windows machines Hiren's BootCD 14.0 - All in one Bootable CD » www.hiren.info (I really should update from my v10 to the latest) GParted -- About For Linux machines http://rip.7bf.de/current/ although really you only need your favourite distros install media

Dario Argento's "Opera". Check around 6:30-7:00 and 12:15-12:45 Dario Argento's Opera (1987) - YouTube for two of he best scenes. Anything by Dario Argento is worth watching; "Suspira" is quite scary too.

Click me. The Unity desktop seems to be the biggest gripe (no surprise there). For me it's lack of action on bug fixes. I used to run the servers for an e-tailer, which ran Ubuntu. I discovered a couple of bugs which I reported to Canonical and there was a distinct lack action. Sort of related is Linus Torvalds dubs GNOME 3 'unholy mess'. I can't comment on Gnome, but KDE4 is a similar dogs breakfast. I'll stick to IceWm for now, although I might give Xfce a run at some point. I run LXDE on one of my machines, and so far the experience has been pretty good.