Posts by Bebu sa Ware

Moving to mainframe can be cheaper than sticking with VMware: Gartner

Choosing between IBM mainframe v Broadcom VMware

you know you are going to be screwed. The only consolation is that now you get to choose between torx and phillips head.

Ask.com, former home of search butler Jeeves, closes just as conversational search comes back

Re: Jeeves wasn't a Butler

A valet or as PGW wrote and I would prefer "a gentleman's gentleman."

Very much the brains of the Bertie Wooster firm.

Hope your holiday was horrid: You botched the last thing you did before leaving

DHCPing and ARPwatch

A beer to each.

When you have the custody of a network to which the great unwashed of tertiary education having unfettered access these two sidekicks were indispensable.

Whether it was an old wifi router with 4 or 5 lan ports brought from home or a tethered phone bridged on to the lan, a DHCP service was invariably active.

Students were normally guilty of sheer gormlessness but staff could apply considerable talent and originality to produce truly magnificent cockups.

Microsoft's turned Windows into a cesspool, but it wants to do better

Bah, ignore me, I am just grumpy today.

I am just grumpy… every day. Not that anyone takes any notice… of anything much nowadays.

But I also concur. Youtube etc is flooded with illiterates who are convinced that their inability to convey a cogent linear argument or explanation in writing is more than compensated by a surfeit of waffling and uncorrelated shaky video. Clearly the idea of using a script and storyboard has never been considered.

So Microslop is transforming itself from an ever enlarging cesspool into a sewerage treatment business. A one stop shit·2·slop shop.

OpenAI locks GPT-5.5-Cyber behind velvet rope despite slamming Anthropic for doing exactly that

latest version of Office is so dangerous[ly]

I think we can all credit that and we also have our little lists of select parties on whom restricted access might be justly inflicted.

"not just marketing fluff"

No. Marketing fluff plus vintage Altman bullshit.

Unlike C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Altman isn't even amusing.

I can think of a better use for a length of velvet rope… but I digress.

Job's a good 'un: Bank of England tech project wins watchdog praise

"can you really imagine the BoE screwing up its global payments system"

All too easily^†… thankfully I shan't have to.

_{† recent precedents supply an abundance of inspiration to even the most unimaginative soul.}

UK pensions dept goes shopping for spy-van tech with £2M surveillance tender

Welfare System ?

When Anglo·saxon Attitudes are involved you mostly get a world best practice poverty punishment system.

The fine British institution of The Workhouse was extant well into the 20th century.

I was recently re·reading Henry Mayhew's Letters to the Morning Chronicle 1849·50 and was struck by the similarity to our times by how large swathes of the working population were rapidly thrown into greater poverty and destitution by technological change (mostly steam.)

Usage-based pricing killing your vibe - here's how to roll your own local AI coding agents

"all I need is a killer app idea"

Seemingly variation on Mrs Glasse's (apocryphal) "first catch your hare."

"I've been searching for one of those for 30 years..." Sounds a little like Pellinore's pursuit of the Questing Beast. :)

Brace for the patch tsunami: AI is unearthing decades of buried code debt

Artificial Intelligence¹, when used by sufficiently-skilled² and knowledgeable³ individuals

I suspect that is one those "of the three, choose two" dilemmas.^†

Probably a very good to retire before this tsunami of accumulated shit inundates one's career and pension plans.

_{† ok there are three choices but being caught on the horns of a trilemma sounds rather rude.}

SpaceX rocket set for unintentional Moon landing – well, a piece of it anyway

"But on August 5, they'll reach that point at the same time."

A nice way of saying that two objects are destined to be coincident in space and time to the extreme prejudice to one.

2026-11-03 might shape up in this fashion when multiple trajectories of insanity are fated to converge.

Possibly more kiss·my·arse… than kismet.

Govern your bots carefully or chaos could ensue

Govern your bots carefully or chaos could ensue

… And in the darkness bind them

ICANN opens applications for new generic top-level domains for the first time since 2012

I badge the .GERY tld …

and its 2LDs BUG and SKULDUG.

Doggery and fellmongery are relatively inoffensive

Fujitsu confirms mainframe biz to die in 2035, in time for quantum AI supercomputers to take over

Re: I'm willing to bet that the hardware ...

If the Fujitsu mainframe business were to come on the market I would snaffle it up. The niche mainframes occupy in the IT ecosystem isn't going to disappear in my lifetime… at least well beyond 2035 (DV).

The last mainframe will be turned off the day after the first commercial grid capacity nuclear fusion powerstation comes online.

The idea of financial records being kept by a quantum computer opens whole new vistas for dodgi·er accounting. Compound that felony with AI then no one will have any idea whatsoever where the money is (or isn't.)

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: Had something like this once with a client

'"insisting that all measurements be made in imperial rather than metric" Must be that rare part of the USA that adapted Imperial...'

There are subtle and some not so subtle differences between the Imperial (avoidupois) and US Customary units which could have provided fertile material for malicious compliance.

The American recalcitrance on adopting an otherwise universal system of units (with whatever faults that system might possess) only confirms the world's opinion of the rather limited intellectual capabilities of the US populace and its congenital pigheadness (with apologies to pig·kind.)

"the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave"

Double clicking the desktop Excel icon would be favourite.

Actually any spreadsheet application. A diabolical device too subtly evil to have been devised by the devil.

Re: Analogue clocks

"The explanation was that you count the 3 joints on the 4 fingers (not the thumb) to get your 12. And for 60 you basically fold down a finger (and the thumb) on the other hand after each count to 12, in order to count to 60 for the number of minutes in an hour."

With that amount of unprecedented cleverness it is perhaps unsurprising that were buried, if not exactly by history, by their neighbours before they could develop computing mechanisms and agentic AI.

Presumably Sumarian accountants convicted of fraud were deprived of half of their computational facilities.

There is only one thing more dangerous than a clever man - no, that's not a clever woman^† - it's a man who thinks he clever.

_{† a reasonable, if suicidal, guess but a clever female would definitely be clever enough not to ever be detected as such.}

Re: decimal system

"consider using a compass to navigate on a sea."

A compass (or sextant) graduated in milli-radians might be a bit more interesting than useful.

The future of software development: Now with less software development

Mega AI Hands-on Tosserthon ?

Sound horrible… it is.

"giving AI models specifications to work with leads to better results." No kidding ? Often observed with human models.

I suspect formal methods work as well (or not) with or without the mandatory lashings of (or by) AI.

NASA boss: make Pluto a planet again

Very like a whale.

HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS: By th’ mass and ’tis, like a camel indeed.

HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS: It is back’d like a weasel.

HAMLET: Or like a whale.

POLONIUS: Very like a whale.

UK.gov's DCMS to new CDIO: Migrate from Google to Microsoft, overhaul ERP, build a team

An Enforced Evening of …

Vogon Poetry Reading seems positively desirable in comparison.

I honestly don't think the fabric of reality could take the strain of so great a suspension of disbelief required to accept the program is even remotely credible.

Hell! Just throw in lashings of AI and it will all just happen in a flash of pyrotechnic powdered unicorn poo^†.

_{† Not to be conflated with Crapita… crap which only includes the lashings.}

Vintage chatbot lives in the past like an elderly relative

An Oswald Mosley avatar. Great ! (not.)

The BUF wasn't formed until '32 but this venom was already poisoning British public life.

I have been reading the "Bobby Owen" crime stories of ER Punshon and was a little surprised in the early stories from '30s had unconsciously normalised some of this poison. Possibly clearer in Punshon's work than in other Golden Age authors partly because he would have had little conscious sympathy for these ideas and his greater attention to developing his characters.

I guess "Talkie" might provide a salutary lesson from the parallels between the late '20s and the 2020s. One might see Reform and Faredge as the third rate heirs of the BUF and Mosley although I suspect Reform would be more the Three Stooges antics of Australia's One Nation party.

I sometimes wonder what my grandfather would have made of our times given he served in France and remained in Europe until the end of 1920. I guess it is fortunate our allotted span prevents us the from directly experiencing history rhyming.

Hashicorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto says GitHub ‘no longer a place for serious work’

Re: The place that has made me the most happy

"even during his honeymoon"

That got me too. I can imagine more pressing pleasures than pushing to or pulling from a git repo.

The whole article seemed odd to me as I only ever use Github as a convenient dumping ground for my miscellaneous rubbish rather than as some crazy ersatz social media.

I must confess during our honeymoon I received a call from work 5000km away while having breakfast on a cruise ship deck asking me to replace the toner in a laser printer. This was peculiar in that the caller knew I was on leave and overseas, that roaming actually worked at all, and finally I never replaced printer consumables (not my job.) Yes the chap was brilliantly a few sandwiches short. I suppose I could have asked the captain how long it would take to sail from Cebu to Sydney Harbour. ;)

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Re: 5G radio waves are different than generic radio waves /s

MI5 has newsreaders?

Those on Russian state media with Oxbridge accents would be favourite; formerly in the employ of British counter·intelligence. Only so many art historian jobs.

Re: In the interest of balance...

Besides the power wattage of 5G is so low it can barely penetrate buildings

Ah yes… but with advanced beam forming and beam steering technology the [insert the conspirators fron your favoured conspiracy theory] can locate susceptable nutters victiims from their social media apps and direct an extremely high intensity 5G beam into their skull effecting control. The Baldrick in that theory is that it notably doesn't work.

Re: Section them

In 2026. You'll be lucky.

They will soon be converting the Sanatoriums (Sanatoria) into Sane·toria to provide asylum for the remaining few so afflicted.

The first sense of verb to section that comes to my mind is to cut into very thin slices à la microtome - the "tome" has the sense from Greek of "cut" as in anatomy or lobotomy; the latter probably the more efficacious sectioning for this affliction.

T H White "The Master" †

5G is clearly a gobal mind control conspiracy operated by the supervillainous Palantir with the master control under Rockall Is.

That's all nonsense of course. A neat bit of misdirection but everybody knows it's really the 5GHz wifi. :)

† The Master T H White (1957)

Re: Maybe…

…they just hate Vodafone?

Does Michael O'Leary offer a Ryanfone MVNO on the Vodafone network?

IBM's AI coding 'partner' Bob hits general availability

Sinister Bob …

The name Bob always brings to my mind the blood chilling image of Killer Bob from Twin Peaks.

If that chap were to be my "coding partner" a rapid unplanned departure would be on the cards.

Why is it that you never draw a Laura Palmer or a Donna Hayward from the card pack of life?

AI reality check: Here's what three companies learned building wallets, homes, and games

"deepen relationships with clients"

"Citi Sky gives us unlimited capacity to do things we need to do to deepen relationships with clients.”

I imagine after the first "bum steer" portfolio review from shitty pie (presumably based on unfolding events), many clients will "deepen" their relationship by interposing an abyss (deep as deep-six.) I imagine "strengthen" and "broaden" might have been intended.

Australia threatens tech companies with 2.25 percent tax if they don’t pay publishers

Re: State sanctioned robbery

"Aussies have hardly shown themselves to have legislators who even understand the first thing about technology."

I don't imagine anyone here (AU) would dispute that beyond pointing out the "about technology" is overly generous - but whose legislators do ?

Unlikely that any legislators understand any mathematics beyond a four function calculator or (feral) abacus. But the issue of foreign multinationals operating in AU, generating significant revenue from those operations, and not paying significant AU tax on those revenues, doesn't require advanced number theory to understand. Such tax minimisation is a problem for which other nations are also seeking solutions.

Advertising is one source of revenue that was available for taxation when local print and broadcast media dominated and was lost in advertising's migration to foreign internet media. The successful application the proposed tax might embolden other nations to apply a more general digital service tax or even reform the whole transnational taxation regime.

Possibly the opening blows in a melee involving tariff tsunamis and other weapons of mad destruction.

Core Scientific accelerates crypto-to-AI pivot, converts Bitcoin mine to gigawatt-scale token farm

Re: headline?

"Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies" — Fair description of crypto and AI grift.

"Overview Energy to beam a gigawatt of solar power down from orbit"

"Some will die in hot pursuit while sifting through my ashes" — Careful where you point that thing.

Microsoft's GitHub shifts to metered AI billing amid cost crisis

The Shrimp is bit off

At least with Red Lobster's "Endless Shrimp," the scampi was fresh but as with most Microsoft's offers this typically comes the raw prawn with the customer.

China blocks Zuck’s acquisition of AI outfit Manus

A Trumpi·anal Tariff Tsunami …

against anyone he [Trump] reckoned was "discriminating" against Silicon Valley.

Poor little Zucchini not allowed to buy a tinsey winsey Chinese AI Mitten.

The PRC must be trembling in its boots. :)

Cybersec is a thankless job: expanding workload and shrinking pay packet

Re: Successful teams get overlooked, same as it ever was

water, gas, electricity - everyone just expects it to work.

In a few place those historic expectations are not always being met. Not infrequently from the same root causes of the dismal reliabilty and resilience historically exhibited by IT.

I have certainly seen successful teams retrenched with the roles/work out·sourced on the unspoken assumption that those teams couldn't have been doing much if they weren't being noticed. The out·sourced replacement are invariably very soon "noticed" and very frequently thereafter.

Microsoft updates the Windows Update Experience: You can hit pause now

Pox Tuesday…

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

Windows victims may now choose the day of the week or indeed of the month on which Microslop is invited to bugger their devices.

That this facility has been made available suggests a line has been crossed and something has snapped within the slop factory. The loss of skills and failure of slopatronics to replace those skills probably means situation is now irretrievable.

AI's not going to kill open source code security

Re: Reverse engineering

'Do AI models read comments or just read the code? If they read the comments then you could "poison the well" '

The comments in code are often the last thing to be updated after the code is modified and might be overlooked leaving a "well" pre·poisoned by the rotting carcass of defunct code.

Not that uncommon but humans can usually quickly detect the discrepancy and ignore the misleading commentary.

I imagine LLMs would do a pretty decent job of converting executable formats like ELF into high level code even recognising algorithms and library code. Reverse engineering is essentially an exercise in pattern matching which is the one trick of the AI/LLM pony.

I would guess you would take as large a corpus of source code as possible, run it through a toolchain retaining the abstract syntax tree and the corresponding generated binary objects (with all the different levels and types of optimisation applied) for model training.

There would be a good chance of extracting an AST from an unknown binary and from that a high level language representation.

Go straight to sell! Windows second-chance setup hawks Microsoft services at IT's expense

"Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows …"

Open wider, before commencing microslop defenestration.

Claude Opus 4.7 has turned into an overzealous query cop, devs complain

a Brit born in 1956 and one born in 2006 are two different species altogether.

Different species ?

Hard to how any would be born in 2006 with speciation in one or two generations.

I wouldn't have thought your typical Brit excelled in reproductive originality.

Letting the interface know the user is an aussie would probably start a right old slanging match.

"G'Day Claude, you old [homophobic slur], I'm Bazza McKenzie , Mr Bazza McKenzie to you bastard. I am a dinkum aussie so do your bloody worst you [Scunthorpe] … … …"

Vernacular English in Fourecks not so much colourful as Octarine; what it lacks in finesse it more than makes up in the deeply offensive and outright obscenity.

Arguably 2006 issue aussies are also the degenerate progeny of the 1956 vintage; the junior lacking the both the hide and pungent piquancy of the senior.

_{Australians taking the piss since 1788… bottling it for resale to your unsuspecting pom.}

Microsoft beefs up Remote Desktop security with ... hard-to-read messages

Re: QA SNAFU

We replaced RDP with LogMeIn long ago. It's a POS as well, but it does what we need.

Nomachine also worked quite nicely installed on Win7 and Win10. I used the Linux client to connect to a couple of Win machies as I already used it to connect to Linux servers running the software.

Intel bets the farm on AI inference to drag CPU back to the top table

Will Intel 14A be a go? Or will they pull a GlobalFoundries 7nm?

I might have written that:

"Will Intel 14Å be a go? Or will they pull a GlobalFoundries 70Å?"

Microsoft tackles quality control issues. Just kidding, it's encouraging experienced workers to leave

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Do I hear the rumble of a Vogon constructor fleet arriving on Microsoft's doorstep?

Pentagon wants to water down drone program with autonomous subs

As usual there is an elephant squatting…

Unlike aerial craft you cannot use radio to remote control completely undersea craft and trailing extremely thin fibre optics at sea is likely impractical.

So arguably these craft no matter how constructed will require truly autonomous systems. A gig for Musk's self driving vehicles ? Taking out a US carrier might be a slightly bigger own goal than a Tesla T-boning a firetruck. :)

The surprising thing to me is that no one seems to have noticed that unmanned undersea vehicles with some degree of autonomy have been developed for scientific, natural resource exploitation and industrial purposes for decades. A least one Western Australian company has been flogging the kit for that long.

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

"a decent place to start."

Certainly not Washington nor the lower 48 I would think. Obscene is likely the word you're looking for.

Surely there’s an island somewhere

"Surely there’s an island somewhere he can just play golf and leave the sane people to run government."

What have the penguins ever done to you ?

US clarifies mobile hotspots part of foreign router ban despite rarity of American made consumer kit

Re: So are they impounding stuff from tourists on arrival?

> Americans are going to be vanishing from the net at this rate

They were already vanishing from the streets.

"And so many other things. It has only been 15 months."

"You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Sadly probably the case.

There must be a lot of Americans let alone most of the world waiting for Porky Pig's "That's all folks" to bring this cartoon clown show to its dismal conclusion.

BOFH: Arrr, I smell piracy ... and it's comin' from a machine with executive privileges

"as well received as a chilli oil enema."

As one who once (and only once) forgot to use gloves and didn't wash his^† hands adequately after processing some rather hot chillis before taking a slash, just the mention of said enema brings tears to the eyes. († "His" advisedly; "her" doesn't bear thinking about.)

Doubtless it would be exceptionally effective when not actually fatal,

_{The difference between a chemist and a physicist is that a chemist washes his hands before using a toilet, the physicist after.}

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope trumps Trump cuts, is launch-ready ahead of schedule

I sense a rapid (un)planned disassembly coming on...

If it had to be… please let drop on to Mar·a·Lago preferably while the orange shit·gibbon is sitting on his golden throne polluting both the internet and the environment with his excrement.

named after … a woman?

I immediately thought of that too.

If she were a woman of colour I would take odds on its meeting a Patriot on the way up.

Sitting on the bus today I was thinking that patriot is at least someone who will defend their nation when the pressing need arises. Patriotism it is said is the last resort of scoundrels. It struck me that the US is currently creating many nations of patriots as a consequence of breeding its own "collusion" of scoundrels.