Mike Mageek is dead
fudzilla.com
fudzilla.com
I hope to have one paragraph in my obit as cool as that.
Based on the story laid out in these two comments, he was approached for a loan by an already wealthy man who never paid him back. T
That’s just dumb, like contributing money to fundraisers run by companies pulling in billions of dollars a year in profit, so they can do the tax write off or earn money off the float of your contribution.
Don’t be so starstruck you let stars grift you.
Or do, this is a hacker news comment, not a cop
I've seen things that are technically "loans", but realistically gifts as there was never any expectation of being paid back.
Or it might not. I certainly can't tell from the article, and a quick google doesn't seem to suggest it's well documented.
> Despite his fame, his accountant did not allow Page to have much money
No one got in Jimmy Page's way ever. There's not a chance in hell that he didn't have the £10,000 or whatever an obscure occult bookshop would cost in early 70s England, an economy still devastated by WWII and a worldwide recession. He's also a smart guy with an obviously good memory. Even now, despite decades of drug abuse, he sounds like an archetypal English gentleman. Zero loss of mental acuity at an age when many are ravaged by dementia.
Mageek was ripped off by Jimmy Page. Shameful for both parties.
Sometimes, your friends ask you for money, you know you won't see it again, and you still give it to them. Granted, for most of us that amounts to buying them a drink or three, not a bookstore, but ... it was the 70s. Based on the surrounding stories in the articles, I'd say their frame of understanding was a bit different from the average person today ;)
Maybe we shouldn't be so fast to cast aspersions on people we don't know, in circumstances we don't understand.
In my opinion, it is the best tech news website.
You may not be familiar with the extensive campaign to find a suitable name for Microsoft. The winner was Micros~1. It took quite a lot of discussion and once the winner was declared, most people hated it but it became the standard. That's the nature of proper, decent, discourse. People riffing on all sorts of stuff and basically having a laugh. No one was hurt and a lot of fruitful chat was had.
Perhaps you are not familiar with this: https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver... That too was the result of a lot of banter and some quite scientific and mathematical digressions ensued.
el Reg has changed. It is rather more "professional" these days or as we say in the trade "boring". However, it is still there and you never know, vestigil thingies can re-grow. It is certainly more alive than /. but it is bordering on lumbering around with its arms outstretched looking for brainzzzz.
This seems to be a thing of the past, perhaps a consequence of Yahoo's sale to Verizon:
<https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/03/yahoo_aol_apollo/>
(The most recent occurrence I can find, dating to 2021-5-3. Despite the subhead.)
So while (IIRC) Office 95 installed into C:\Program Files\MSOffice (in DOS, "C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFICE"), Office 97 called its folder "Microsoft Office" which in DOS looked like C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1".
The Inquirer's name for Microsoft was "the Vole". The British field vole's specific name is Microtus agrestis.
(Former Inq and current Reg writer here.)
Yes, it has been toned down a little. This is intentional, and there are good reasons. For example...
* El Reg has more writers in the USA than the UK these days. As a rule, Americans do not react well to British sarcasm and cynicism. Many take it at face value and find it offensive.
* A great many readers these days are not native English speakers and struggle with wordplay and so on. So, we reduce that.
It's all a bit more international. OTOH it's alive and thriving. That is a good thing.
"As a rule," - in the main but I have some fabulously sarcastic American mates.
There are some very dodgy commentards on el Reg. I don't mean "Jellied Eel" and other Johnny come latelies, who are clearly state sponsored nonsense.
Back in the day there was a single whipping boy, whose handle was "eadon" (I think). He was obviously human and came across as somewhat mad and seemed to enjoy being a bit bizarre. Nowadays we have amanfrommars who is a bit strange and probably a bot. Then there is the usual collection of noddies from various dictatorships.
As you say, it is thriving but I do think it has lost some of its edge (as I said we are all a little flabbier).
There used to be a fabulously foul mouthed Canadian writer who majored in virty stuff and of course, we all lament the passing of Lester who was frankly barking mad (in a sane way).
I often think that el Reg and Private Eye are in a similar space in the hyper-dimensional space of reporting (yes, I said that without blushing).
Increasingly, both sides of the pond are getting the hang of each other, thanks to the internet and a few other less important things, such as shared values.
"are not native English speakers and struggle with wordplay" - hard disagree (as a HN noddy would say). English is the French language, as you know well. People who are proficient with English as a second language appreciate being stretched and those that are not, have access to enough machine translation to get a good idea of what is going on.
I do think you have lost a little bit of your edge and I think you know what little means in this context. You could quite easily create ... sorry ... re-instate in house personalities and "el Reg ... things" that work for at least both sides of the pond.
What about running a bot outing competition? It could end in tears or be hillarious.
Sure, me too. They are my favourite kind of American mate. :-D I stand by the point though.
Parallel example: Lobste.rs bans Reg links being posted as stories, at all, 100%.
The mods said it is "snarky" and mean and mocking and feel it is not worth sharing.
> There are some very dodgy commentards on el Reg.
I said nothing about commentards, and I'm not now.
> As you say, it is thriving but I do think it has lost some of its edge (as I said we are all a little flabbier).
Please note: I am a writer, not an editor. I have zero editorial control and in the context of the Reg I don't want to be an editor again. I've done it, for a much smaller site, and it's very hard work indeed. I do not fancy the job of doing it on such a high-profile high-traffic site, not one bit.
All I will say is this: the change in style is conscious and intentional.
> I often think that el Reg and Private Eye are in a similar space in the hyper-dimensional space of reporting (yes, I said that without blushing).
Fair. Aspirational, I'd say. I like and respect Lord Gnome's mighty organ.
> "are not native English speakers and struggle with wordplay" - hard disagree
Ha!
This again is a policy decision, but at coming up on 3Y full-time there now, they are right. You would be amazed how little people understand. I was.
And the ones who understand least do not know it.
General reading comprehension on the Internet at large is extremely poor.
> English is the French language, as you know well.
You mean, "lingua Franca"?
You know the Franks spoke an ancestor of German, right?
But yes, it is.
I also note I lived in Czechia for nearly a decade, speak poor intermediate-level Czech as a second (er, 6th) language, and in that time I had to totally redefine my understanding of "fluent English speaker".
I stand by what I said.
Globish is a thing. It is not the same as standard English, and British English is, sadly, not the standard form: that is American English.
> enough machine translation to get a good idea of what is going on.
Which is precisely an example of an area where idiom and slang and elliptical figurative speech goes wrong the worst.
The decisions were made, and made knowingly. It's not my place to question them, but anyway, the reasoning was sound.
I guess that I should note that I haven't really looked at the site other than the odd linked article in probably close to a decade.
* okay, not definitely, but that was my impression
Huh? Naah. Or, maybe -- perhaps they ramped it back up in the '10s, if they'd ramped it down a lot in the '00s. Because they were wildly satirical in the '90s.
(Given the number of "fix typo" commits across all the projects I work on, I'd be the very last soul to pick up a rock to toss on that front, haha!)
[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2002/06/18/tell_me_why_i_dont/
[2]: https://www.theregister.com/2002/06/20/monday_gets_that_mond...
[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20021127100055/https://www.intro...
EDIT: fix formatting
Mike handed me his business card, with the Inquirer imprint. I examined it carefully, looked at him gravely, and intoned "but you've misspelled 'Register'".
He looked back at me quite chagrined.
Great guy, and an amazing history. Godspeed Mad Mike!
His story is pretty much classic.
The Inquirer was also quite enjoyable.
I like that Simon Travaglia is still penning his BOFH series. I have followed him since the 1980s.
thats what you call "a change of heart"
> The exterior design of the machine's casing is reminiscent of a Sherman tank cross-bred with a 1970s sports saloon, while the lid opens with the grace of a bank vault door. Yet the designers have managed to make the machine look attractive all the same, the overall effect being what you'd expect from GI Jane in a glittery ball gown.
I still read it regularly, but some of the spirit has gone. But you never know -- someone new could show up and revive that joi deivivre je ne sais quoi. Haines definitely did that when he joined.
Cheekiness aside, I love what he did for IT and the Internet. I'm sorry to see him go.
The Rodgister. Is this the fucking Grauniad or el Reg?
Supposingly he was friend with the current CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger. In the 90s during a meeting with Intel staff, Magee asked a very uncomfortable question and Gelsinger, then an engineer at Intel, kicked him under the table to stop him.
Since then whenever Mike reported news on Gelsinger he would write his name as "Kicking" Pat Gelsinger.
Magee also started Charlie Demerjian's career by hiring him as a freelancer at The Inquirer. Demerjian then made a name for himself by being a very accurate pain in the ass for Intel and Nvidia for years to come.
Dr Thomas Stewart Von Drashek will be organizing the funeral.
Mike Magee's last logoff doesn't register.
https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/30/google_stole_my_paten...
>Boggs became famous for drawing incredibly realistic banknotes by hand and then using these "Boggs Bills" to pay for goods and services. The twist was that the merchants who accepted the bills often recognized them as art and would give him change as if they were real money. The merchants would then sell the "Boggs Bill" to collectors for significantly more than its face value.
>Boggs' work attracted the attention of the U.S. Secret Service, which was concerned with the legality of his art, given its resemblance to counterfeit currency. He was investigated multiple times but was never convicted of any crime because he never attempted to pass his work as real currency. Instead, he always made it clear that the bills were his own artistic creations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
>Boggs viewed his "transactions" as a type of performance art, but the authorities often viewed them with suspicion. Boggs aimed to have his audience question and investigate just what it is that makes "money" valuable in the first place. He steadfastly denied being a counterfeiter or forger, rather maintaining that a good-faith transaction between informed parties is certainly not fraud, even if the item transacted happens to resemble negotiable currency.
>Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986,[20] and was successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted.[21] As detailed in Geoffrey Robertson's book The Justice Game, all Bank of England notes now carry a copyright message on the face as a direct result of Boggs' activities, the idea being that if they cannot secure a counterfeiting charge, then they can at least secure a copyright violation.[22] In 1989, one of the original £5 "bank notes" from the trial was included in the British Museum exhibition Fake? The Art of Deception;[23] this item was added to the British Museum's permanent collection the following year, via donation by the artist himself. In 2022, this drawing went on public display in the British Museum's room 68 (the "Money Gallery") alongside one of Banksy's "Di-faced tenner"[24] £10 notes.[25]
>He was arrested for a second time in Australia in 1989, acquitted and awarded the equivalent of US$20,000 in damages by the presiding judge.[2][26]
>Boggs' home was raided three times between 1990 and 1992 by the United States Secret Service on suspicion of counterfeiting.[27] In the raids 1300 items were confiscated, although no legal case was brought against him.[28][29]
I like the Boggs, story, below.
https://shivashakti.com is where you can find that aspect of his work.
I wasn't confused before, but I am now.
I had a bit of a story about AWS. I contacted them. There was some interest. I finished the write up (I was investigating an AWS service) and emailed it to the journalist. We'd had a fair bit of email exchange up to that point.
Never heard back - at all. Not a peep. I waited two weeks, just for him to reply, then gave up on it and published.
I later emailed an editor at El Reg about this, no reply also.
Obviously, what El Reg publish or do not publish is completely up to them and I have no issues whatsoever with whether they are interested or not - the only issue here is the silent treatment.
Not a big deal at all, but let a faintly bad taste in my mouth. I kinda stopped reading in the end after that. A friend pointed out El Reg run paid infomercial articles from AWS about the very service I investigated, but I have no idea what actually happened.