My first Unix box at home was an ATT PC7300 (Unix PC) with a whopping 2MB of memory and the (huge for the time) 67 MB disk. Real Unix Sys V R2/3 on an 8 MHz 68010 with a 1200-baud modem.. CNEWS, Emacs and LaTex kept things running along nicely for email, USENET and my wife's college papers (including both Bachelor's and Master's theses) as well as some games, code development and other things.

When my oldest daughter got into college, she had to take the mandatory "Intro to Computers" class where they used PC's with Word Perfect. She almost got tossed out for telling the TA what crap WP was and demanding Emacs (or at least Vi) and LaTex! so she could get her in-class work done!

With an appropriate selection of applications, this little box could be very useful both for general applications and specialist uses such as portable control panels/data loggers for solar arrays, PLC monitors, Model rocketry or aircraft telemetry analysis and dozens of other "vertical" applications. That's the real application space for a little box like this.

Here in the Great Lakes region of the USA we are staging a last-ditch effort to keep 2 species of Asian carp from getting through the Chicago Ship Canal and into the Great Lakes ecosystem. These giant (up to 100 lbs.) and aggressive carp have already overrun the Mississippi River after an accidental release . They have a nasty habit of jumping at small-boat operators when they heat the sound of outboard or inboard engines and have caused many fishermen to require trips to the ER after an encounter.

We don't need these GM Frankenfish in the ecosystem!

A small fleet o' these beasties flying a grid pattern would not only be good for geomagnetic scans but would be highly effective for Coast Guard Search And Rescue (SAR) missions as well, since it would put a lot more "eyes" (sensors) over the target search area than conventional helicopter and aircraft searches, increasing the chances of finding survivors alive.

Much of the drivel the NRA dispenses relies heavily on the idea that if only one had a gun in their house or on their person, they would be safe from all forms of criminal lowlife since they could simply shoot the bastard and get on with whatever. A couple of weeks ago, a group of three lowlifes in my town staged a "home invasion" where the family of three (Mom, Pop and Teenager) were watching TV. Once inside, they held the family hostage while they stole the father's collection of FIFTY firearms and assorted ammo.Fortunately one of the blagger's girlfriends traded info on the raid for ignoring some legal problems of her own and the firearms were recovered and the gang arrested. BTW they were armed with a broomstick which they kept well hidden and claimed was a sawed-off shotgun.

I guess 50 guns weren't enough.

Any plans for a Blackberry version any time soon?

Windows 13 will use up most of the computer power doing desktop searches and providing eye candy.

The high school I attended in Detroit was blessed by donations of a 1401 for the "business" curricula and a 1620 for the scientific ones. I was in the first class to learn on the 1620 (in 1965-66) and we first learned in SPS (Symbolic Programming System), a language very much like Assembler. Then on to FORTRAN II.

Weird but wonderful in there was no fixed "word" size, just a string of digits delimited by special characters giving variable precision arithmetic at the cost of CPU cycles. Also didn't have a hardware adder allowing arithmetic in anything from base0 to base36. Was thus called the CADET: Can't Add, Doesen't Even Try.

We punched our own cards for program and data input and used either the console typewriter (literally an IBM electric typewriter controled by the CPU) or the high-speed card punch followed by the interpreting printer for output.

Now that was Real Programming! :-)

...a hopped up version of my old NEC Mobile Pro 780/790. Indeed, I wish there were some upgrades to that old beastie that would allow it to do decent WiFi, browsing etc.

Are Captain Jack and crew on all in case they are needed?

Only 30? Congress has 535 members plus innumerable aides.

the 1960's Broadway musical "Golden Boy" in which a boxer who has made it big goes back and visits the neighborhood in Harlem where he grew up. The locals are unimpressed with his furs and jewels and taunt him with lines like:

"Forget your sable, mink and ermine! We've got 50 kinds of vermin!"

and the most pertinent:

"This neighborhood is classy, we've got rats as big as Lassie!"

Yeah, I'm that old. Better get my coat.

@Mike Richards

Silly boy! I don't want the General Atomics Avenger, I want the Diana Rigg Avenger!

I'll get my coat.

Isn't the name "Scroogle" already in use for a Firefox add-in that protects your privacy? I believe it's short for something like SCrew gOOGLE.

Works a treat for me!

like the 2-way radios et. al.

... a very sensitive diaphragm in a simple "dispstick" device for finding the level of Liquid Helium in a helium-dewar-inside-a-liquid-nitrogen-dewar flask.

We made a long hollow tube of 3mm stainless-steel tubing stock and welded a 5cm "cup" to one end. Stretching a condom over the cup and keeping one's finger on the tight diaphragm, the tube was slowly lowered into the flask. When the end of the tube got to just above the liquid helium, a definite movement of the diaphragm could be felt. The depth of the tube at that point yielded the amount of liquid helium in the dewar.

Of course, the sudden cold tended to damage the condom after just a couple of uses* and so we went through a lot of condoms. This was in about 1970 and condoms were still kept hidden and had to be asked for. University rules prevented ordering them directly ("You want a gross of condoms for what!?") so we snuck them through on petty cash. We'd always send Linda, the prettiest female grad student (and best sport) to get them. It would always cause quite a stir when she went in and asked for her "supplies!"

* uses in this application, anyway.

...NebuAd ought to bend over and kiss its arse goodbye. Or at least say, "Yes, Sir! How high sir?"

Dingell, who represents a district adjoining my own, basically defines "clout" in the House of Representatives.

Good on him!

.. no need to fix it. For many simple applications, even Win 3.11 approaches overkill. The cash register for the local coney island doesn't need anythnig more so why should the cash-register manufacturer shell out for anything else as long as they can get it? Same for dozens (hundreds?) of other products.

Me, I learned to program on an IBM 1620 CADET which you loaded with the "monitor" (OS) before each job. Intel hadn't even introduced the 4004 yet and BillG was still in grade school then. Yes, it only used punch cards for high speed I/O.

The 1620 was called the CADET (Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try) because (like many calculators) it did not have a fixed binary word width hence no hardware adder. Instead, a "number" was a string of 6-bit BCD digits between special delimiter characters. Math operations (including simple addition) were done by table lookup which allowed arbitrary precision arithmetic, limited only by the amount of time you wanted to spend on a calculation.

Ah, the good old days! :-)

Dial up your friend, transfer X MB of compressed, packaged data from him/her, unpack locally. Pack up the subscription list (proper subset of your own groups) and serve them up to your friends.

Use UUCP over IP through an SSL tunnel (instead of physical dialup) and AT&T/AOL/TW/WOW/whoever doesn't get to see a thing. Nothing to invent (or re-invent).

Child pr0n **must** be stopped - it is beyond evil - but if the ISP's think they're going to stop it this way, they're greatly mistaken!

Vista doesn't run on Power nor does Mac OS X (per se). Try a **real** operating system like zOS or AIX or *BSD or even (shudder) MVS/VM!

This puppy is designed to get actual work done, not as a geek toy, so all references to toy machines and games miss the point entirely!

As a WOW customer.I just want to know how to join a class-action lawsuit against the bastards!

If they won't respond to customers and Congress, maybe they'll respond to good old litigation!

... If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

There is but One True Unix...and it came from Bell Labs.

Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and TrueUnix are its offspring.

The BSD's are its legitimate half-children.

Anything else is an illegitimate wanna-be copycat.

That ought to ignite the flames :-) :-) :-)

No Lucy Sheriff pics? Shame!

Happy Birthday from here - been reading since the earliest days and though I've been retired from IT for <gasp> over six years, I still read El Reg every day for a good dose of fun and occasional information. Keep up the good work!

999? 112? Neither one works here in the States. Probably not in a lot of the rest of world, either. Another poorly thought-out plan from a government. Mine is no better.

Most jurisdictions here in the US have similar laws about making "hoax" calls to emergency services. Plus there are the Federal laws about making "hoax" calls using a radio (to the Coast Guard, for example). Hoax (ficticious) calls are no joke - they not only tie up a phone line (that's the least important aspect) but they tie up an emergency operator or watchstander and may result in the dispatch of police, fire or search-and-rescue assets all of which could result in a legitimate emergency not receiving a timely response.

This guy obviously needs help and should get it -- in prison.

I used to work in IT for a large automotive company which I won't name but which just sold blighty-faves Jaguar and Land Rover to India. Obsession with cost-cutting, stock prices and bringing in "fresh ideas" from totally unrelated industries, not to mention excessive executive compensation for the executives, have damn near driven the company titsup. It's that way throughout American business, and likely business in the UK as well.

Paris, 'cause she's as obsessed with fame as the CEO's are with bonuses and is as equally likely to do anything to get it.

I was forced to install Quicktime in order to take some "distance learning" classes. As regular as clockwork, I'm told that I need to update to iTunes + Quicktime and, now, Safari. I DON"T WANT ITUNES OR SAFARI!!! Just Quicktime security updates, please.

I don't download music, movies or TV shows, don't own an MP3 player and really resent Apple's attempts to force me to install software I neither have use for nor want.

Never an Apple product here, Stevie boy!

Aren't those snowplow tracks at the top of the ridge? Just some highway maintenance going on. Nothing to see here, move along.

Mine's the orange one with the yellow reflective panels and the hard hat.

An awful lot of people will take the position, "You nuke my computer and destroy my personal files and I'll sue YOUR f**king ass off. " Or, "I'll have YOU arrested and prosecuted." No damage to the spammer, just to the vigilantes.

Odds are, the self-righteous vigilantes will be a lot easier to find than the bad-guy spammers, too, not having developed the hiding mechanisms these criminals have.

Might want to think of a different tactic.

Paris, because she doesn't think before she acts, either.

Funny, all these supposedly-smart techies heaping derision on the burn victim for being so "stupid" as to not adapt herself to the needs of her Lord And Master Machine. If you don't get the point that technology should serve people, rather than the other way around, you really should either find another line of work or admit that you are a lackey of the Lizard Masters.

Technology should always be designed to fail as safely as is feasible, regardless of what the "stupid" user does.

BTW, these "stupid" users might be rather brilliant in another field, just not computer technology.

According to IMDB, Sexy Lexxy was played by Allyson Rees

I don't know what advertising goes for in the UK, but over here, the equivalent of 60,000 euros is pretty darn cheap for advertising to start with. Add in all the publicity Ryanair has garnered from this and it sounds like a really good advertising "buy" to me!

Paris, because she's an expert at getting extra publicity for next to nothing.

Did they call in the crew from Torchwood in case it might be something other than a soon-to-be-canceled Czech?

Allstate has a patent pending for a declining deductible plan on auto insurance in which your collision deductible declines by a fixed amount for every fixed period you go without an accident. I had that kind of coverage from Citizens Insurance 30 years ago.

It's the whole idea that you can patent a "business method" that needs to be killed off, as it's usually a software implementation of a "business method" (e.g. Amazon's infamous one-click patent) that are the real problems.