Posts by The Organ Grinder's Monkey

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: Bike

Floyd! Well done!

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: Do yourself a favour - Buy a decent e-reader

Don't have an e-book, so haven't learned the tap to turn page thing, but what I do find myself doing depressingly often is pinch-to-zoom type gestures on printed pictures in newspapers etc.

Re: Not a problem with my paper books

"dreaming of being a tractor"

That's a wonderfully positive way of framing it.

Mine just rattles the windows & loosens the neighbours fillings when she gets going properly! No-one could dream through that noise.

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

Re: Must be powered by the Firm

Upvote for a, very obscure musical reference...

France buys nuclear supercomputing spinoff Bull from Atos for €404M

Re: Bull….

So what we're saying here is that it doesn't matter if the IT provider is state-owned or privately owned, if it's providing IT services to government it'll be a shit-show either way?

That's much as I thought, glad we've cleared that up!

On a serious note, is that a natural law? Is it automatic (axiomatic even?) that once an IT services company exceeds a certain size (by turnover, profit, headcount?) that it becomes incompetent? Or is it, as I suspect, that the key factor is that the customer is local or national government, & what practical steps does the commentariat suggest could be taken to change that?

Doesn't bode well for the (oft suggested wish hereabouts) for a central IT service to provide compute to UK councils to prevent another Birmingham.

Commercial space pleads with NASA to stop moving the goalposts in orbit

Re: NASA Acting Associate Administrator for Space Operations…

Ref "it was due to have triple-breasted prostitutes"

Wasn't that Eroticon 6?

ServiceNow allegedly says salesman 'overachieved' and is not entitled to comp

Re: ServiceNow have achieved the impossible

My first thought was would the employees & "customers" of Birmingham (& Sussex) councils have any sympathy for either side if this was a story about Oracle rather than ServiceNow?

Re: The Sales Game

Less a game, more a simulator?

Re: Is ServiceNow in a Union, the bad type?

Possibly you're correct about European unions these days, but it definitely wasn't the case in the 70s.The unions that Arthur Scargill (mine workers), Derek "Red Robbo" Robinson (car production) fronted, & the one that the Timex employees were represented by all displayed classic goose-killing tendencies, & they weren't alone.

Engineer sabotaged hardware then complained when it didn't work

Ref Antron A above "And that air needs to come IN to the enclosure, but it also needs to go OUT"

Also applies to bathroom extraction fans.

Close-fitting door closed? Check.

No other means for fresh (drier) air to enter room to replace what the fan is trying to remove (apart from maybe a window cracked open right next to the fan such that the resultant airflow short-circuits & avoids scavenging any damp air on it's way through)? Check.

Now tell me again why you think that the fan is faulty?

FCC says it's making it easier for US telcos to ditch legacy lines

Re: Classic false choice

The copper lines don't "always work" here in my bit of Canterbury. We lose the service completely at least twice per year for several days each time, & it's always the copper in the local ducts that's failed. Until quite recently there was always a redundant pair they could put us onto but even that seems to be a gamble now. They've laid fibre in the ducts now & will be offering connections to us imminently. My contract is up for renewal in a couple of months, & though I have no need for the performance uplift I'll be going fttp simply because it can't be less reliable.

Chemists concoct nail polish that lets clawed humans use touch screens

Re: Gene editing

Upvote for the Fat Slags reference.

YouTuber lands on Moon using a ZX Spectrum. Conditions apply

Re: R Tape Landing Error

Obligatory MJ Hibbet link:

https://youtu.be/Ts96J7HhO28?si=EOQaJ-kqWkgvgcKM

Re: Real fun

I had my tonsils out in the late spring of '76, & reacted badly to the anaesthetic. My lungs filled with foam & I was ordered to stay lying down until it cleared, no matter how long it takes. It took 'till the Autumn, so I missed it all, just the pictures of dried up reservoirs in the news & long lost villages reappearing as the waters receded.

Starship may chauffeur Orion to the Moon, as NASA mulls ditching SLS after Artemis V

That was supposed to be sarcasm or satire, now it actually is government policy.

Country that put backdoors into Cisco routers to spy on world bans foreign routers

Re: Stealing intellectual property?

That's a good point. Having demonstrated that the US is fine with the arbitrary removal of another country's corrupt president, presumably they'll be fine if someone does the same to them? Not sure what you'd do with him after? Take him out behind the barn for a small injection of lead behind the ear? Maybe a prison cell in Kabul or Tehran?

Trouble is that there seems to be a large pool of vile people waiting to step into his shoes, albeit without his alleged "charisma", so presumably there'd be a long period of infighting before trump's "dynasty" finally implodes. Maybe by that time a credible opposition will have emerged?

Go for a walk, man: Sony's drive to create a car parked by partner Honda

Re: Not an inspiring product

I think that it's 10 years rather than 7, but I may be wrong, or it's EU only, etc, but your point is otherwise entirely correct.

Re: Software-defined car

# that one in the corner

Did you not test drive it before you bought it? The problems you describe are common enough now (eg OS & smartphone "features" & bloatware) that you'd surely be looking out for them? 29 year old Volvo here for several reasons, including all the ones that you describe.

Have you never seen a Nissan Juke?

SAP's grand cloud escape plan €2B short of the runway

Re: They obviously don't know their customers

I've no technical knowledge of any of this stuff, just a rubber-necker watching multiple ERP related train-crashes happening in slow motion simultaneously, but I think that your colleague was right to connect it with colonic irrigation...

GNOME 50 debuts with X11 axed, Wayland front and center

Re: "simply do not understand phrases like "backward compatibility""

The late & still greatly missed Humphrey Littleton was a keen birdwatcher, & as he was getting into his car to leave after visiting someone the subject came up in passing:

Visitee "Oh, you're an orthinologist"

Humph "yes"

It was only when driving away that he realised that he should have replied:

"yes, I am a wordbotcher"

RIP.

Calling out corporate BS? There's a steaming pile to aim for

Re: In the mockery a glob of insipid business speak oozes through.

Utilise? See also "eventuate" & "actualize"

I'm meeting people that would self-identify as "normal" (ie non-business / MBA) using those in daily language now, in the UK...

Re: In the mockery a glob of insipid business speak oozes through.

Ref "dove"

You've accidently reminded me of a modernism that makes me gag. Dove is a pigeon-adjacent bird, dived is what a diver has done.

While we're at it, can we kill "medalled" too? Phonetically it's what Saville, Epstein et al do, not successful athletes.

Microsoft fixes broken Windows update days after vowing fewer broken updates

Re: If M$ made cars ...

In the cars defence, I'd imagine that there's very little variance in the hardware that those updates have to run on, so the entity pushing the updates can have reasonable confidence that the hardware that they test on is "exactly the same" as that on which those updates will run in the wild?

Palantir trial plugs into UK financial watchdog's data trove

Re: Wine and steak

His pants were on, mercifully. Do you mean trousers?

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Re: They could break down battery into 2 modules

Are you sure that the ones in the lawnmower are in parallel? Does it run with only one installed? On power tools the twin battery arrangement usually seems to be done to get higher voltage I think?

Struggling to put your AI aversion into words? Here's a handy glossary

Re: Memories

Isn't that just a definition of all wives everywhere? (Not just what you eat either, every word, every deed...)

Re: I have zero problem saying

Don't hold back, say what you really mean!

(upvote for saving me from saying it.)

In the name of science: Boffins build fart-tracking undies

Of course the real question remains...

Do you weigh more or less after farting?

Re: Software testing is essential

20+ years ago, when I first started attending the local pub quiz, there was a team entirely composed of CAMRA (campaign for real ale) local area committee members.

One of them used to bring his dog, & another spent his weekends making & selling vatfuls of strong curry as part of an event catering business. The quizzes are held on a Sunday night, by which time he'd have feasted extensively on any unsold produce.

They always used to blame the dog, even on the occasions when it wasn't there. It was a very effective quiz strategy as its bloody hard to answer difficult questions when you're fighting for breath & your eyes are watering.

Re: Been anywhere near a herd of cows? Or a dog?

Hands down the most eye-watering, room-clearing, stomach-churning farts that I've ever encountered were done by a Rottweiler whose owner gave him a bowl of Guinness every day.

Ref lifts,

"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

West Sussex's Oracle rollout pushed back again as costs balloon 15 times

Re: Reinventing the wheel

Of course, but feelings of self-importance & inflated salaries are threatened by admitting such simple truths.

Is your place a council, in which case, business as usual presumably. If it's an independent business that's more interesting as (self employed so making big assumptions here) they'd have a bit more of an interest in not going "Birmingham" on a pivotal part of their IT, & won't have the option of selling off a load of stuff to finance the shortfall?

'Are you freaking crazy?' Bot harasses woman, gets led away by cops

Lidar presumably means that it has a better idea of it's surroundings than a Tesla?

Microsoft veteran Rajesh Jha prepares to retire, triggers yet another reorg

"Microsoft Executive Vice President (EVP) for Experiences and Devices"

So it's all his fault, then?

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

Re: "concerns about the safety of those attending the US event." - clocks

"It used to drive any gusts we had... "

If you have regular gusts...

Re: "concerns about the safety of those attending the US event." - clocks

Ref cuckoo clocks, this was a great place run by two absolutely mad brothers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckooland_Museum

There's a wonderful 30 minute documentary on them & their museum here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001741l

Iran plots 'infrastructure warfare' against US tech giants

"targets including... regional Dubai office handling advertising"

So it's not all bad then, then?

Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and jailbroken phones

Re: "other mobile operating systems, such as GrapheneOS, may also face restrictions"

Ref "bonnet welded shut"

You probably thought that you were joking, in which case you might like to look into the Audi A2 from 2002ish...

Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them

Re: Should we raise one or two digits to Digital Cash?

Mmm, crackling...

Britain turns up the heat on homegrown ceramics for hypersonic missiles

Re: Homegrown ceramics

Maybe that's why I initially misread it as "funding from the McD's Chief Scientific Adviser". Simultaneously terrible & credible?

You can power a G-Wiz EV with 500 vapes, and this YouTuber proved it

Re: Reva G-Wiz may be one of the worst vehicles ever made

Hard to disagree, but I feel that the makers of the G-Wiz (or G-Waz as it should probably be known) had the benefit of learning from the mistakes of those makers that went before them, but chose not to. The very inverse of standing on the shoulders of giants?

Re: "the mountains of trash"

If it's the disposable element that you're against, fair comment. Otherwise, the available evidence strongly suggests that they are hugely effective as a smoking cessation tool, & that the only people that have managed to do themselves serious harm with them have done so either by mixing their own fluids for them, or by setting fire to things, usually by being careless with the batteries.

Re: Battery Software

Vaperware, Shirley?

Lenovo shows off snap-together laptop with removable keyboard, screen, and ports

Re: Concept Cars, #1 Missing Feature

Likewise the X270, which AFAIK is the last of the line to have that feature. External battery is available in two capacities too.

I have one dual booted between W10 & MX Linux. I rarely boot the W10 but on MX it goes for ages on the internal battery + large external battery combo. Unfortunately my usage isn't for continuous use so I can't quantify how long "ages" actually is, sorry.

As far as the previous comment about only being able to charge the external battery in the laptop goes, yes, correct, but when I had 'phones with removable batteries I was always able to pick up a little charging dock for them in which to charge the spare batteries. I always thought that it would have been an obvious accessory for an enterprising Chinese indy manufacturer to make for a few models of "professional" laptop like the thinkpads, but I never saw such a thing for sale.

Bank of England says it can run £431M settlement system without Accenture

Re: Hanging Offence

I flinched at that, but then concluded that the gentleman in question was most likely a native of the new world & was therefore employing some form of local dialect.

Server crashes traced to one very literal knee-jerk reaction

Re: Reset Buttons

But is there a box labelled

"Bits of wire too short to be useful"

as someone found when clearing the immaculately organised shelves of their late father's home workshop?

You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised

Re: No servers

Yes, that's the one.