* Posts by shamgetz

14 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2024

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

shamgetz
FAIL

A friend of a friend who did an internship with Microsoft during the early 90's swears blind that there was an error message in the Visual C++ IDE that said "If you were stupid enough to trigger this error then you know exactly what you did wrong!"

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

shamgetz

I remember doing a 3 hour round trip to cycle the power on a PC one Saturday afternoon because the guy swore blind there was no power button and the PC case was locked inside a fitted desk. Got there to find out there was a power button, but someone had stuck a Post-It note on it as they didn't like the shining LED. Same place also had a nasty habit of turning off the air-con in the server room as there was a bunk-room downstairs and they were annoyed at the humming stopping them sleeping; it also stopped me sleeping when I got a call at 4am and had to drive to site to restart the servers that were at 1 million degrees centigrade and just about to disappear through the server room floor in a pool of molten metal.

Microsoft will kill Remote Desktop soon, insists you'll love replacement

shamgetz
WTF?

Adding servers to the app?

I've installed Windows App and am seeing no devices in my list, so it's telling me to contact my system admin. Surely you don't have to get every server that you need to connect to added to your Windows account by an admin to be able to use it? Please tell me that's not the case and that there's a way to simply add my frequently used RDP connections to it in the same way as with RDCMan?

I'd try and find this out myself, but since some marketing genius at Microsoft has decided to call the thing "Windows App" it's virtually impossible to get meaningful or relevant search results. I can find all sorts of info about Windows app development or how to install and app on Windows, but f-all about this new tool.

Pornhub lockdown and fact-free Zuckbots – welcome to 2025

shamgetz
Facepalm

Re: It's an easy go to

That sounds like a great idea, with zero risks or flaws. So if there's no centrally controlled id, presumably anyone wanting to view porn simply uploads their passport or drivers' license to the porn site? Also, regardless of whether it's centrally controlled or not, what's to stop my kids nicking my passport out of my cupboard and using that to access smut?

Brackets go there? Oops. That’s not where I used them and now things are broken

shamgetz
Childcatcher

Re: Crashed an IBM 360 mainframe

The mention of COBOL is giving me PTSD. Fortunately I'm not quite old enough to have used it in the field, but in a classic case of completely missing the point, I spend two years at college having to write my COBOL programs onto squared paper (one character per square) before we were allowed to enter them into the PC on the desk because our lecturer told us earnestly that that's how it worked in business. Of course, given this was 1993 rather than 1963 we all typed our code into the PC, 'tested' it, then transposed the code onto the coding sheets at the end. I shudder to think how many hours I wasted on that!

Infosys founder calls for 70-hour work week – again – claiming it creates jobs

shamgetz

I assume his son-in-law was working >70 hours per week. Would certainly be one explanation for some of the decisions he made while 'running' the country.

Judge again cans Musk's record-setting $56B Tesla package

shamgetz
WTF?

I'm no fanboy of Musk, having cancelled my Twitter account and changed my plan to buy a Model Y this year as a result of his behavior, but this does seem odd to me unless I'm missing something. I remember at the time when the bonus agreement was made it was widely thought to be completely unachievable and lots of people were saying he was crazy to accept it. Now that he's met the criteria against all expectations, it seems unfair to then withdraw it. Presumably if he'd not met the criteria no-one would have been arguing for him to be recompensed or paid a salary retrospectively?

Europe's largest local authority slammed for 'poorest' ERP rollout ever

shamgetz

Crazy isn't it? I'm not sure how true it was, but I was on a training course years ago with a lady who worked for the local NHS authority. She told me that they were strictly forbidden from using the same system as other NHS authorities due to issues relating to monopolies and tendering law, so they all had to specify and procure separately. May have been cobblers, but it sounds completely plausible and if so would likely be the case for local councils as well. It's like in schools - you'd imagine all schools need very similar systems, stationary, supplies, etc., but all have their own systems & supply contracts. It's that age-old dilemma between local flexibility & entrepreneurialism, versus centralised consistency & economies of scale.

The problem at the moment is that if the current government tried to standardize it they'd be accused by the right-wing press of being communists and denying market forces, so you can't really win. Of course, based on previous attempts at centralised government IT procurement, it'd probably also go horribly wrong, end up costing a bazillion quid, achieving nothing except weighty bonuses for Capita/Infosys/TCS/[insert other big name consulting brands here] execs, before being canned after 4 years when the next government comes in.

Telcos scolded for unwanted erection of utility poles in race to wire up Britain

shamgetz
WTF?

Re: Like any other superhighway

Unlike commercial ownership, where it's all about the customer? Have you tried traveling by train or swimming in the seas or rivers around the UK recently?

shamgetz

Re: I remember when it was all fields around here...

Meters and meeters of fiber, four as far as yore I cud sea.

shamgetz

We're in a village near Hull and KCom have done huge amounts of work to make sure their infrastructure is underground, spending a fortune around 20 years ago to make sure their fibre network was up-to-scratch and arguably well ahead of its time. I've got absolutely no affiliation with KCom, but we're on a new-build site and get full fibre to the premises at 900Mbps for around 45 quid per month including phone line - even before that we had 400Mbps to our 1950's council house with no poles and no visible above-ground infrastructure other than the exchanges. It's always been bullet-proof too - I think in the 5 years we've been here I've had to cycle the power on the router about 3 times. MS3, on the other hand, are causing a complete eyesore, throwing up poles everywhere, including where they partially obstruct people's driveways, where they are so near existing signage that they remove about 50% of the usable area of the footpath, etc. MS3 say KCom are being restrictive with their existing infrastructure and KCom say they're not, but I wish someone would bang their heads together to get it sorted. I personally have no intention of using MS3 given how they've handled the work, and based on local news reports a lot of other people feel the same.

Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa's internet

shamgetz
Pint

I worked with a support engineer who brought the whole of a major traffic control operation to its knees when he completed an update and restarted the server but didn't actually stop to check that the server had come back up before showing a clean pair of heels and disappearing for lunch. He arrived back at the office an hour and several pints of Guinness later to discover that everything had been out of action while he was away. Needless to say, he didn't work with us for much longer.

ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade

shamgetz

On the positive side they seem to have cracked time travel while they've been waiting for self-sustaining fusion - from the press release linked in the article:

"The ITER Organization convened a press conference on 3 July to provide more details of the project baseline proposal submitted to the ITER Council on 19-20 July"

Raspberry Pi stock surges after London IPO

shamgetz
Unhappy

Sad, but quite possibly true.