Posts by Nick Ryan

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

Re: snapflatimages

A lot of that was down to the fact that Microsoft decided not to implement shared library management in their Operating System.

This rapidly led to DLL hell, then Microsoft overlaid ActiveX and COM over the top of this DLL hell. Later Microsoft decided that this wasn't hell enough and .NET came along where we have hundreds of copies of exactly the same DLL files (that's what they are under it all) splattered all through the WinSXS disaster zone alongside so many file and directory links that the disk operating system is unable to work out how many files and directories there really are, let alone how much space is taken by the mess. In the end, in effect, it is very similar to a flatpack installation where the smallest of applications has oodles of duplicated component files in WinSXS and these just accumulate over time, they are never removed.

The Roomba failed because it just kind of sucked

Re: I'm not lazy,

Same here. Pretty crap site if what is meant to protect it just blocks access.

Yep - one of the real killers was the Trump Tariffs. These added an enormous and uttery arbitrary cost onto the production and supply of these devices.

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

Re: 650k is enough

8086 processors can handle up to 1MB of RAM through the 20bit address bus, although memory access was always slower than non-8086 systems due to all the paging required. The architecture of the PC, specifically hardware memory mapping, was what limited things to 640 KB.

Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security

Re: Different planet

"URGENT NEED FOR AI-POWERED TRANSFORMATION" this was a mis-spoke by the marketing droid. What they meant was "shareholders could get scared about the amount of cash being poured down the open sewer of AI and demand that their dividen payouts are maintained".

Yeah... we had that happen. User was working on a document, saved it, renamed the document (all on SP Online) and came back later to find the document had disappeared entirely, even gone from application MRU (Most Recently Used) lists. "Comments added to document" recorded in the piss-take "activity" list for the document. Version history of the document shows nothing other than the prior document. Naturally, the "audit" functions have been moved so nothing that even pretends to be documentation by Microsoft is accurate and the apparent no location for audit trails to find out what happened lists absolutely nothing for the entire document library despite all the auditing being enabled (apparently).

Microsoft is building datacenter superclusters that span continents

And still no intelligence

And there will still be no intelligence - throwing even more resources at what is in effect nothing more than predictive text with almost as much effort put into the output filters doesn't produce any repositories of knowledge, it doesn't produce intelligence and it never will.

25 years of meatbags permanently in space on the ISS

Re: Packing for Mars

Exactly this, and some of the effects are really eerie when you look at them. I was watching the video of Chinese astronauts loading their oven to cook chicken and I noticed how eerie it was watching the layout of the chicken on skewers and how none of it was affected by gravity. On Earth the things would have collapsed and fallen down but in space he could manipulate and carry them very differently.

A great presentation I went to by an astronaut noted that aside from the physical issues around muscle and bone density loss after a long stint in zero gravity, the coordination ones were very notable too and even weeks after he would routine drop things on the floor from an arbitrary height because he was so used to just letting go of something and it staying largely in place. He also noted that coordination was also off because just moving an arm and hand/fingers again after acclimatising to zero gravity meant having to subtly relearn basic movements. So not only did he break things, such as cups, by just dropping them on the floor but also regularly knocked things off tables too because his arm was lower than expected!

Microsoft teases agents that become ‘independent users within the workforce’

Oh you and your negative stance on progress. Wanting to know what will happen after spending huge amounts of money on unknown systems after the executives had been told by the Gartner waving sales-rats selling them is not at your pay grade.

Re: "how are you supposed to predict usage/consumption in those scenarios?"

Not forgetting that the sales pitch costs will be abject lies too - performance based on "averages" for systems that operate in burst profiles, costs based on only partial equivalence, and then throw in the lies that "security will be better because in cloud".

Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

While encrypting data at rest in the servers of a regime with no data protection laws (USA) is a route, it also makes the entire operation pointless because almost all the add-on activity happens at server level. Want to search or index data? Can't happen without the servers having access. When the servers have access, so does the hostile regime where the servers are located.

In effect, anything more than a huge blob data store is insecure - because even if every file was individually encrypted, the metadata such as filename is not - and the file names are often quite important.

UK data is where?

Then we get to the, what strongly appear to be, abject lies about the location of UK data.

For example, take Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online and configure it for "UK" and then check where it is actually operating using GeoIP lookups and the locations quickly switch from lonXX.ntwk.msn.net, which is recorded as being located in London - UK to IP addresses that are recorded as being located in Redmond - USA. This very strongly indicates that UK data, despite the claims of Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online Administration Centre, is being stored in a different country, in this case the US where the regime has no worthwhile data protection laws whatsoever.

Just in case this could just be administration related, and these IP addresses are in fact located in the UK where Microsoft claim, I also ran speed tests from various locations throughout the world. London and UK based speed tests all operated somewhat slower than USA originating speed tests.

Failures within Microsoft 365 infrastructure, of which there have been a few in the last month, that affect North America also tend to affect "UK" services too.

All of which indicates that Microsoft are lying when it comes to the location of UK data.

Trump's anti-sustainability agenda comes to Eurozone

Re: TDS

Trump loves the uneducated for very good reason. People like you try to defend him.

The makers of all damn drugs put cautions about use during pregnancy. Because they don't want to be sued just in case. This doesn't mean that a real doctor won't proscribe these drugs, just that they will be cautious when they do. There are, of course, some drugs that are absolutely prohibited during pregnancy but that's a different matter.

As for the made up claims about Tylenol causing autism, this is wholly made up and the blathering "press conference" of RFK and King Taco chatting about it in an office and deciding on it really shows this. It is total bullshit lapped up by the tragically unintelligent and/or gullible. Autism is not a fucking disease that can be caught or cured: it is genetic. The bit about it being genetic should be the clue, for anyone with any form of education, that it's not caused by Tylenol. Lots of studies have been carried out and what were the results? That there was absolutely no increased risk of autism through the use of Tylenol, the primary driver is genetics. There is a slight increase in chance of those with autism in the family through the age of the couple involved, with a bias towards the age of the man, but this is only when there is already a high chance of autism exhibiting in the child through family autism traits - age on its own has little impact. Drugs such as Tylenol have no impact whatsoever.

Re: TDS

Oh dear, it's tragic the repeated failures of education and basic education that you are spouting out here. It's almost as if you are licking up the faeces from Fox and the current regime and using it with a crayon to type.

Autism is up many 1000% since 1970

No, it is not. The reported numbers are up, but this is solely because of (a) improved testing and diagnosis and (b) a tweak to the definition as to what autism is. Don't worry though, the solution is easy! Stop testing - this was the great orange maggot's take on covid outbreaks - stop testing for it and there won't be a reported outbreak.

Obesity in the US is 40%

Not sure what point you are attempting to make here, but doubtless it will be "der democratz dun it" or something equally moronic. How about decades of the promotion of fast food, huge portion sizes, adding huge quantities of sugar into absolutely everything and a ridiculous car dependency where one cannot go to a shop down the street without using a car. Essentially - crap food, too much food, and very little exercise. This has been worldwide knowledge about the USA for decades, but somehow it's now "duh democratz foolt". Maybe putting people first instead of profits and improving the quality of food, education and reducing the inane requirement to use a car to do what in any decent country can be done on foot or, at worst, on public transport.

US people are plagued with a cancer epidemic

That point above about putting profit before people? Here it is again. All kinds of toxic chemicals everywhere, whole ecosystems destroyed by factories and factory farms, yet surprise that somehow this is having a negative effect on health. The US approach to "just do it and if people are harmed they can sue, and only then consider stopping it" is completely to blame for this kind of thing. Civilised nations have companies prove, as much as possible, that something is safe. The USA puts the onus on the victim to prove that something wasn't safe.

US people are dying on a younger age compared to other developed countries

There's this thing in civilised countries called social healthcare, but in the USA healthcare is purely about profit and any heath benefits are purely incidental - this is from insurance through care providers and drug companies - it is profit and shareholder return first and health last after everything else. The braindead gun lovers demanding more guns to "fix" mass shootings and murders are also behind the high death toll of younger people in the US. The US has more gun deaths of young people per 1,000 of any country in the world except actual fucking war zones or places with no government whatsoever. The solution to this is not more guns, to arm teachers or to turn schools into prisons. Many people outside of the US only believe that there are any schools in the US because of all the mass school murders. The USA is a third world country in first world clothes.

RFK is an object of ridicule because he is an utterly abhorrent dangerous self-serving retard. He spouts dangerous pseudo-science over and over, denigrates people who actually know what they are talking about and just pushes one retarded conspiracy after another - all sucked up by the disastrously uneducated, gullible or just full of hatred for others (MAGA). That occasionally he accidentally comes out with something sensible, such as wanting to lower toxic additives in food to the levels of civilised countries, is a good thing but it in no way counters or validates all of the other stupidity that he spews out regularly. A broken clock is correct twice a day after all.

The great orange maggot loudly pronounced that he loves stupid people, he loves uneducated people...

Re: TDS

Two degenerates sitting in an office making up nonsense medical claims doesn't involve any evidence whatsoever. Even worse when they have absolutely no clue about anything medical whatsoever, their only skills are narcissism and lying - and when called out on lying their only response is to just lie more.

None of that is about media influencers, it is about seriously deranged sociopaths lying for fun and profit. None of it is about medical experts and evidence, it is about "feelings". None of it is about autism, because it's not a fucking disease to be caught or cured.

Windows 95 was too fat to install itself so needed help from the slimmer 3.1

Re: Seems like...

Ooooh, I'd forgotten all about win32s. That was one... horror... yes, definitely horror, that I had managed to block out.

Re: 'only one reboot' principle?

It was part of the art of system management at that time, knowing what driver updates one could ignore the reboot demands for and which ones really did need an reboot for.

Re: Seems like...

Pretty much, also the installer was launchable from within Windows 3.x. If it was a 32bit app that would have send Windows 3.x into a meltdown.

Re: Actually only neede for graphical installer UI

The Win95 installed needed to be launchable within Windows 3.1 therefore regardless of anything else, it just could not be a 32bit executable as that kind of thing would have sent 16bit Windows 3.x into utter meltdown. I agree that it could have easily been a DOS based installer but, for quite reasonable marketing reasons, I suspect that needing it to be graphical was important. Therefore a 3.1 based installer was a good compromise.

Twist in Tesco vs. VMware case as Computacenter files claim against Broadcom, Dell

Re: Open playing field

In this case the contracts were signed prior to Broadcom taking over and starting to asset strip VMWare - neither Tesco nor Computacenter had any control over that side.

Re: Tesco will be apoplectic

Ah, but cloud... cloud... cloud... CLOUD... CLOUD... CLOUD. You MUST move everything to cloud, no matter how unhelpful or unprofitable or how the performance will be worse. Because it's CLOUD. Also, because there are gobshite consultants running around telling all their victims that they have to move to cloud to take advantage of (looks up the current excuse) "AI".

Re: the laws become an ass

Seeing as Broadcom don't do anything original and are just make predatory asset grabs and then bleed them dry... their legal division is all they really have

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Re: A taste of the future.

That kind of activity does shave a few minutes off how long I need in a bed before I shove by feet out the side to cool them down. So it's a double benefit really.

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: There is a stupid advert

Yeah, setting an embedded div element to 100svh in height can make a mess of things (a really deeply embedded div element)

Oracle will have to borrow at least $25B a year to fund AI fantasy, says analyst

Re: If you want to watch this bubble burst in all its gory, follow Ed Zitron

not just that but the diminishing returns are staggering. Ten times the compute resources to generate 10-20% improvement is not exactly sustainable (the actual numbers are hard to derive as there are so many variables but all of the models are suffering this) and the magical land of actual intelligence is still a very, very long way away. But the VCs have sunk so much and some companies have also that the cannot possibly, ever, stop now just in case a competitor makes it to the magical land of actual intelligence, which they won't, but the money has to be piled into the bottomless pit just in case.

Image generation is one of the areas where it's easy to demonstrate the cluelessness of the approach. These models have no domain of knowledge whatsoever, therefore as one to produce a image of a dog and all it can do is mash together previously scraped images of dogs and then layer upon layer of post processing is applied to try and make it less likely that a dystopian nightmare is output. These systems don't know what a dog is, they don't know how they move, the number of limbs and where they should be, or anything like that, it's just copy-and-paste and mash the images together.

This doesn't mean that the tools can't be useful to some extent, but there is no intelligence and domains of knowledge and there never will be through this approach.

Engineers successfully reboost International Space Station after early Dragon abort

Re: Moonbase building material

The minerals available on the moon are rather different to the composition of the Earth, particularly in the bits that can be reached. What is on the moon is generally nasty and sharp due to a complete absence of weathering processes to make things less unpleasant (think of it as effectively asbestos), but the major difference is the lack of volatiles (especially water) and anything vaguely biological which removes a lot of types of rocks and minerals too.

The manufacturing processes would have to be very different to those on Earth due to the vast difference in available material, primarily water, but also the very unpleasant state that things are in as well which will greatly increase maintenance as well as just the greatly reduced gravity. None of this is unsurmountable and lunar factories would be the way to go but without easy supplies of basics such as lubricants (usually petrochemical in nature, or at worst biological) and rubbers (again, usually petrochemical or biological) such machinery can't be maintained for long which would require either frequent resupply from Earth or some novel replacements, likely biological which then requires an extensive protected enclosed ecosystem even if it is just bacterial vats. Nothing that is unsurmountable, but the investment to get it up and running would be immense before anything even vaguely self-sustaining is possible.

YouTube coughs up $24.5 million to make Trump 'censorship' case go away

Re: Donald's Ballroom for the Whitehouse

The odd thing is that I really can't envision the great orange maggot ever dancing in a ballroom. Perhaps if underage girls were involved then he could stage another pervert contest in it with the unfortunate girls having to personally influence him to boost their chances. The whole design is tacky as hell and reminiscent of the casinos that he plundered for cash.

AI coding hype overblown, Bain shrugs

Totally. The more constrained the environment the more useful these tools are. The more complicated the task then the more utterly awful elementary failures these tools make. But then they have no domains of knowledge whatsoever, everything is essentially a glorified predictive text. Ask one of these tools to create an image of a dog and it cannot do so; what it can do is mash previously scraped images of a dog together into the approximate of a dog when seen as a 2D image of a dog. There is no domain of knowledge as to how many limbs a dog has, how a dog moves and can therefore pose, nothing other than scraped images mashed together. It's very clever in what it does, but it is not in any way intelligent and it never will be no matter how much additional resources are thrown at it.

On the over hand, having one of these tools generate a summary of a document is reasonably effective, as long as the subject matter is not too specialist. It will still need proof reading and editing, usually for inconsistent tense but if it's something not terribly important then it works quite well.

Code generation is another of these, looking at the patterns in your code these tools can replicate it as well as mash in code from other developers... but there is never any understanding whatsoever as to what the code is for and how it works. As a result, any developer using this for anything for the most menial and trivial code generation exercises has to then go through and very carefully check the generated code. For example, using the wrong variable in a the following logic statement may be consistent with the order of variables and the prior code but the meaning could be catastrophically different and these things can be annoying to find and fix. But it's the usual pushers of this nonsense who are claiming that because a not very effective tool is being used but the results are not good enough that it needs to be used more throughout more involved and in-depth tasks? There is only one winner in this and it's the bank balance of the pusher of these tools (before they declare bankrupcy of course).

Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea

Re: Trump backpedals...

Oh it was such a totally and utterly awful backpedalling too. Trump, using his personal propaganda outlet TruthSocial (as a rule, anything online whether a service or a username with the word "truth" in it, is as far from the truth as is possible), is used to ranting and frothing like a demented toddler with anger issues and apparently this is an adult doing diplomacy. He must have gone even more orange than usual having to write something where he didn't spray spittle over the screen without trying to blame Biden for something, or leftists, or anyone other than the cretin responsible (him). It still reads like a demented toddler with delusions of self-importance wrote it, so it was almost certainly his work:

When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other “things,” come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land. If we didn’t do this, all of that massive Investment will never come in the first place — Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn, because we used to be great at it, but not anymore. For example, Shipbuilding, where we used to build a Ship a day and now, we barely build a Ship a year. I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own “game,” sometime into the not too distant future!

After the ICE gestapo raid on the plant a trump lickspittle posted

Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations. President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.

...which was despite all of the workers being there legitimately. In the meantime, the usual sociopathic MAGA cultists were screaming about how great the raid was, how the illegal immigrants deserved it, and to be treated like animals and criminals, and so on.

For entirely explicable reasons, the South Korean government was very unamused by the entire disgusting situation. If the plant wasn't so far along construction it would almost certainly have been just cancelled and moved and built in a civilised country instead. It still might be I guess, or possibly just delayed hoping for a regime change.

UK Lords take aim at Ofcom's 'child-protection' upgrades to Online Safety Act

Re: So banning suicide and self harm content.

Oooh, that's a point. Maybe something demonstrably "good" being taken down by this ridiculous OSA might, eventually, get through to people.

When it comes to content that is also unpleasant, any site that has the bible stories on it must also be blocked because codified slavery, infanticide, genocide and murder are all bad. Oh, and abortion too, because the bible is in reality pro-abortion.

Re: Wont be long

That's some of the ridiculous bits about it isn't it? You have had your steam account for 21 years, all running against their previous verifications and I suspect quite a few payments to Steam (naturally for games that are never played :p) and yet they will still feel a need to question your age.

Re: UK Fascism

The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), and the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.

When something is put clearly like this, it is absolutely evident that the USA is already a fascist state. It's not "leaning that way" or "on the way", it is wholly and utterly there. All empowered by a mass of ill educated people prepped to believe anything without, or despite, evidence, just so they can project their inner hatred onto others. The UK is not close to fascism yet, but the likes of Reform UK Ltd are pushing very hard towards it and almost nothing is being done about it. Fascism, or anything bad like it, tends to happen when people are complacent - it's not a sudden revolution, it goes step by step, one little push at a time, each step normalising the steps before them.

Re: UK Fascism

Yep, unfortunately many of the conspiracy seeking fruitcakes are already defending evil sociopaths such as Kirk. It seems that being prepped in their live to accept anything without, or despite, evidence makes them susceptible to every bit of rhetoric out there.

Re: The UK already had porn blocks. It didn't need the OSA.

I think it only applies to new accounts. Therefore if/when you get a new account then "adult" content will be blocked by default until you state otherwise. Depending on the provider moving house might not mean a new account.

Re: House of Lords

Unfortunately when the likes of Johnson just went wild and granted HoC seats to his nanny, mistress, boot lickers and any other kind of lickspittle, the place is full of reprobates. Not like he was the only one, of course, but he was probably the worst in many years.

Re: "We Are Doing Something"

...and yet nothing happens when a foreigner incites violence and unrest?

...and yet nothing when the leader of Reform UK Ltd incites violence and unrest?

...and yet nothing when the leader of Reform UK Ltd breaks parliamentary rules regarding political uniforms?

...and yet nothing when the leader of Reform UK Ltd breaks reporting and tax rules?

BOFH: These office thefts really take the biscuit

Re: When I were a young lad...

I'd advise not visiting the BCS's London show office then! They have this utterly useless tablet controlled drinks machine that has an appalling user interface, is somehow woefully unresponsive and as a result makes the process of picking a beverage and having it come out from the dispensing machine that's situated a few metres away a truly tortuous experience. They are very, very proud of this completely useless system and fought back strongly at any suggestions to just replace the damn thing with a machine that one can walk up to, push a button and the requested drink comes out almost immediately.

Although I haven't been to any events there for a couple of years now, therefore it may have been mercifully accidently dropped down a lift shaft by now.

Re: Jaffa cake... stale?

I was wondering this too. They are buggers they are, and I <know> that when they read "quantity 10" that working in IT, this "10" bit is actually binary. Because there is the first jaffa cake (when opened), and the last jaffa cake (when none left), but absolutely nothing in between. It's a mystery that can only be realised if "10" is binary for two.

VMware's in court again. Customer relationships rarely go this wrong

The Chagos isles are very different and very contentious. The negotiations regarding them have been going on for quite some time, with the UN involved as well due to prior UK governments' refusal to even discuss returning the islands back to their owners. There were some relatively amicable arrangements proffered but then the USA waded in and complicated things and then they got more complicated again and yeah, all bit of a mess really.

Please don't use the fish aisle for that, it would make a mess and be unhygienic. Please consider using items from the frozen fish section instead.

FCC plans to kill Wi-Fi on school buses, hotspots for library patrons

Re: Control flow of ideas

There is only one direction that removing workers rights (what very few there are in the first place in the USA), removing unions, removing societal safety nets, removing education... a slave labour class of people who will do anything to try and survive because they have no choice - they have to reproduce, which will be costly or risky and they will have to work somehow just for what passes as food. This will increase wage poverty and increase crime. The "solution" to what will be rapidly growing crime is, of course, more guns in the hands of fascists and control freaks.

Broadcom admits it’s sold a lot of shelfware to VMware customers

I've yet to encounter a single organisation that was upbeat about Broadcom's VMWare. A lot of "we can't leave yet" and "we're leaving on our next refresh recycle" but the numbers of organisations actively wanting anything to do with Broadcom? Very, very low I suspect.

Microsoft open-sources the 6502 BASIC coded by Bill Gates himself

Re: "Microsoft later, ahem, drew inspiration from CP/M"

Multitask... the only way to get a Microsoft OS prior to NT4, and in consumer OSes Windows 2000, to actually multi task was to use to multiple computers. Anything else was purely cooperative and any application or system function that wanted to use 100% CPU could and there was nothing much that the OS could do about it.

Re: Well now.

Page 0 was where all the real fun was to be had; it's where all the cool kids hung out. :)

For those that have no clue what this is all about, which is probably most people, the 6502 accessed memory in 256 byte pages. This was efficient enough except when accessing data over a page boundary at which point this added additional instruction cycles to the execution time and when timing was critical this could be really important to take into account.

Page 0 was a special case and was the first 256 bytes of RAM on the system and the CPU started at byte 0 in page 0 when booting. More usefully there were special instructions that only worked with page 0. These instructions were either faster than equivalent instructions elsewhere or required less bytes to store, and frequently both. It may not seem much but when an instructions takes, for example, 5 clock cycles elsewhere but 4 clock cycles in page 0 that's a significant speed increase.

How Windows 11 is breaking from its bedrock and moving away

Re: Intel couldn’t license Arm cores and build chips themselves.

Microsoft could have very easily built into the "Windows Store" interface the capability to pull software from different sources but all to be managed and installed in a cohesive manner. This would have greatly benefitted large organisations who could run their own store supplier and even independent software vendors who could provide their own software through their own store linked through the "Windows Store". However, as usual with Microsoft, greed kicked in and they wanted everything to be their own systems and nothing else, and to slowly turn everything into a regular licensing income system to the exclusion of everything else.

Re: Intel couldn’t license Arm cores and build chips themselves.

Microsoft still haven't worked out self-inflicted DLL hell. Their non-solution to the .net mess that evolved out of the ActiveX/COM mess which evolved out of the DLL mess is still... a total mess, just much worse than ever. The WinSXS directory and it's hundreds of thousands of directories and copies of the same and different version of DLL files (.net assemblies) and nothing has been solved whatsoever, just pushed into an unmaintainable mess that when it goes wrong will prevent arbitrary parts of the system or applications from working as expected.

Re: 'Many of us'?

Also the bastard stepchild that fell out of all of these merges created something that had some serious flaws. I understand that most of these have been fixed now, but the first versions were a dystopian mess and multiple serious security incidents ready to happen.

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

At Uni we all got the degree of the person to our left (or right, I really cannot remember). There was an epic mail merge failure that the administration didn't notice until quite close to the time, likely needing a new supply of pre-printed certificates, and therefore everybody was given an envelope/tube with an IOU in it and told that they'd get their certificate in a couple of weeks.

Re: More than once

In a previous life we had installation technicians, who were just about capable of assembling a disaster zone but having to leave before it had to be tested, wire ethernet cables by just looking at what to them was a random assortment of cables and just connecting them however they felt like. Not to mention cutting the cables to length so it was almost impossible to undo their nightmare.

These were the same installation technicians who didn't care whether it was 240v AC or 24v DC down a wire either... it was highly important that they never turned anything on because it would almost always be a costly replacement job.

No more Blocktoberfest? German court throws book at ad blockers

Re: How would they enforce this?

Even more when the majority of the time on a page is spent trying to find the actual content in between all the fucking ads. Whoever implements any ad that changes the layout of the page as the page is scrolled needs to be boiled alive, while being shown adverts for something they only need one of and bought one last week, and to have these ads cover all instructions for escape.