* Posts by Tim99

1840 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008

Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so

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Coat

Script 2>&1 /dev/null ?

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

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Facepalm

Maybe a typical Oz thing?

In 1998/9 I was asked by a customer what was needed to update the 6 PC LAN that ran our software. I suggested Pentiums with Windows NT4 Workstation running peer-to peer with one of the PCs running the "new" SQL Server 7. A few weeks later I was asked to install the new equipment that the owner had bought. It was one Pentium for himself, with the instruction to use his 2 year old desktop PC as the "server". I noticed that he had leased a brand new Holden Commodore 5.3 litre V8, and suspect that he had gone to the bank for a loan based on my specs and used the money for the car lease...

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

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Coat

Re: Nope, not sharing

You mentioned Starbucks, and said that you needed your morning cup of coffee - They aren't really the same, are they?

Mine's the one with the bag of artisan freshly roasted coffee beans in the pocket >>====>

'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

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Re: As the old saying goes......

I've posted this before - I heard this at the bar on a UK Oracle training course in the 1980s...

Q: What do you call Oracle customers? A: Hostages.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

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I was tempted to give him a whatever-the-opposite-of-a-discount-is - I had a customer who asked if it was possible to give a "negative discount" - They wanted to charge some of their customers extra for the hassle of dealing with them/getting paid (At the time Local Governments were particularly bad). I told them that all they had to do was put in a negative number into the customers table discount field; but warned them not to do it until I had rewritten the relevant reports to "hide" the field if it was zero or negative...

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

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A close contact at IBM UK has had more than half of their Indian based team laid off. Needless to say times have blown out, and they think that some stuff will not be delivered. Maybe India is looking expensive? I might have stuffed up the currency conversion, but it looks as though a senior IBM engineer in India is paid roughly twice that of a similar position in Thailand...

That home router botnet the Feds took down? Moscow's probably going to try again

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A word from Wednesday Addams: "Wait"...

Gelsinger splits Intel in two to advance foundry vision

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Shareholder value?

Split, strip, and dump?

Australian supercomputer 'Taingiwilta' comes online this year with [REDACTED] inside

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Trollface

Re: What can be inferred?

Nobody over here drinks XXXX or Fosters, except a few Queenslanders or Victorians respectively. A cheapish beer (lager) that many drink is VB (Victoria Bitter), but as some in the other States don't really like Victorians, we pretend that we don't like it much.

Europe's data protection laws cut data storage by making information-wrangling pricier

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What do they set loose?

A visa to fill Australia's empty tech jobs is getting more expensive, but maybe better value

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Re: Left the country.

When I migrated 30+ ago, a banker told me that Australia shipped iron ore out at ~AU$30/ton. It was imported back at ~AU30,000/ton as a Honda Accord.

Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it

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Re: $3,499 x 200,000

What I remember from the days when I bought extremely expensive kit (to get real work done) was that the "profit" was high so that the manufacturer would probably still be there when you needed to upgrade or replace the kit...

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Big Brother

Re: I like the watch

Said someone who might be using Android and Windows?

Unit4 software's budget bungle leaves schools counting the cost

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Re: Really?

Yeah, but I would have specced it with 1 or 2 GB of memory, so I could have "saved" £10-20 on each one; and as they run cooler, I could have bought cheaper cases...

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Joke

Really?

I'm retired, but I think I could have restarted the company and come in at about £1 million. My proposal:-

Consultancy and Software Design (me), £950,000; two junior contracted programmers, £50,000; software licences (SQLite and Python) £0;

Hardware: 1 Raspberry Pi 5 with case, power supply, USB SSD, UPS and cabling, £300. Obviously, this is meant to be a professional and reliable system with guaranteed uptime - So my hardware proposal might need upgrading...

I'd consider adding a backup/failover system, so another £300 to duplicate the hardware - See icon >>=====>

Curious tale of broken VPNs, the Year 2038, and certs that expired 100 years ago

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Which OS? I missed some versions, but mine have been OK back to the RP 1 B (2012) which I still have - I must see if it will still boot...

Chinese Coathanger malware hung out to dry by Dutch defense department

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Re: Timezone?

It wasn't me, honest. I know I live in the same Timezone, but so do others.

You could have heard a pin drop: Virgin Galactic reports itself to the FAA

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It could be worse

The front fell off: Clarke and Dawe, YouTube.

It took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI safety

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Trollface

Re: Why now?

Well obviously, it's because a Taylor Swift is a "Pentagon asset": The Guardian.|

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

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Windows

History?

Around the time of Windows 3 a number of simple but "important" applications were written with early versions of QuickBASIC AND VB. QB was handy for opening up a (serial) network port and reading/writing something from/to expensive machinery: e.g. download results, write them into a file, check that they were OK, and then clear the results from the machine...

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

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Linux

Pi 4 vs 5

Perhaps the user base is splitting as well as expanding? Maybe an IP will cause further splitting, and marginalisation of (the volunteer) support? Pi's up to 5 seem mainly to be used in "projects", dedicated server type systems, and hardware controllers. As a desktop the 4 was "adequate". The 5 seems to be aimed more at desktop users (I have found the performance and functionality quite acceptable, but it needs additional [fan] cooling and the 27W power supply).

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

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Re: Pointless if potless

As for microwaves... Don't the Colonials have kettles? - They do have kettles, but they are limited to 110-120V and >15A, unlike the "proper" UK/AU 230/240V and 10/13A so they take about half as long again to boil. A 1kW microwave probably is not much longer, but would have significant safety issues from superheating and manual handling - The superheating issue can be reduced by placing a wooden stirrer in the vessel (or, heaven forbid!) a teabag...

Someone working in our local "Environmentally Friendly" show-house told me that they had found that a traditional wide-bottomed steel based kettle on an induction hob was quicker and used less power than a conventional kettle.

Tim99 Silver badge

The dreadful tea from bags can be ameliorated by purchasing better quality "pot" bags (without the string), or cutting the string off and using a pre-warmed teapot. If a teapot is not available, an approximation can be made by using a mug that has been heated with boiling water from a kettle. Then add the teabag, pour boiling water onto the bag and fill to within a centimetre (5 mOsman) of the rim. Place a saucer or small plate on top of the mug. Wait 4-5 mins and remove the teabag. If you prefer to add milk take another empty mug and add the required (small) amount of milk, then carefully decant the prepared tea into the mug - This avoids a bitter taste, as the milk will not be denatured as it would be by adding it directly to the first mug (the extra heat interferes with the binding of bitter tannins/polyphenols in the tea). See also: How to make a perfect cup of tea (Royal Society of Chemistry).

HPE joins the 'our executive email was hacked by Russia' club

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Joke

HPE is not a purveyor of coloured water...

...but, perhaps, they were looking for the (HP Inc.) printer firmware that doesn't require an internet connection and subscription?

Microsoft admits issues with Windows 10 patch almost 2 months after release

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Gimp

Re: kneecapping the OS

It may well not have helped in your case, but I find that a forced restart after any update is often a fix.

US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050

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Re: As for the fascist greenshirts...

A wood burner is, perhaps, not as green as you think: Medical Xpress - ACT deaths (more than from RTAs).

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Re: An "easy" fix

It definitely depends on where you live. Last year my 3kW solar panels generated 5.2 MWh, peaking at 0.69 MWh/month in summer; and troughing at 0.22 MWh/month in winter. We are retired, and have found that our power use; including running the reverse-cycle air conditioner at 25-26C in summer, and 23-24C in winter; has given us a buy-back period of <4 years. We paid <AU$4,000 for a relatively expensive system connected to a local micro-grid - The current federal government rebate for a similar system is AU$1,160.

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

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The Empire Strikes Back

Darth VaderNadella-McGill: "I Am Altering the Deal, Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further."

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

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Windows

Beaten by "Just good enough"

I stayed away from Lotus Notes - In the 1980s we used DECs ALL-IN-1 suite. It had WP, email, personal/business management tools. and could be used to create custom applications.

On a VAX, with connected terminals and minis/workstations, I found it (quite) pleasant to use and program. It seems to have been swept away by Windows; we ran the DOS version for a while; but DECs "failure with PCs" probably killed it (and DEC)...

Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup

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Gimp

Re: HELL F**K NOOOOOOO...

I recently replaced on Intel iMac with a shiny M3. I made the decision to do a clean install and just load the software I was actually using; with my mail, calendar, and documents. I've been retired for a while, so I realized that I no longer needed Parallels VMs for all the Windows stuff I had written. The new disk drive's contents were 170GB smaller than the old one.

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

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Windows

After Y2K

We were busy up until the end of December 1999. I had written a lot of stuff that ran under Windows, some of it was not compliant, either because the hardware it ran on wasn't; or because it needed to talk to MS Office components, that weren't. We had a couple of *NIX products that ran on older hardware that were going to fail, so they got moved to Debian on new Intel boxes.

I made the decision to go away to a really nice hotel with no mobile phone coverage on the 30th (just in case). All of our customers were OK, so when I was back at work, I heard a bit of "Nothing happened!" - I reminded them about how much effort and cash was spent over the previous 2 years.

It went a little quiet with our existing customers, but we did mostly bespoke software so we were OK as we picked up new business. A number of the hardware and bog-standard software business suppliers really struggled until ~2003 as "everything was replaced".

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

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Writing "loose" instead of "lose" is common now - It was, I believe, started by young people in the USA.

Apparently being old often means that you are more tolerant, I'm still waiting for that to happen.

Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed

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Trollface

Re: When did Windows turn into Linux?

Q: When did WindowsLinux turn into LinuxWindows? A: systemd?

AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

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Re: "Discovery could have implications for the field of forensics"

The prints were incomplete and a "possible match" for about 20 people in the FBIs database. The Spanish authorities declared that there was no match with the crime scene. Later, a US judge declared that the evidence was largely fabricated.

My memory is not as reliable as it was, but I recall that in the 1970s it was determined that for a full match for 2 different individuals from a single print was about 1 in 2 billion, or roughly 2 possible matches for the World's population at that time.

Boffins demo self-eating rocket engine in Scotland

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Mushroom

Re: No Scottish jokes?

I have seen someone mix a small bit of melted Mars Bar with an oxidizing agent. Yes, it deflagrated such that it could be used as rocket fuel. Deep frying it first would probably improve this.

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

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Windows

For the many

A very long time ago I asked our MS rep why there was no spell check in WordPad. He said that If there was, they wouldn't sell many copies of Word/Office. We did agree that (provided a user could spell) it was adequate for the many who wrote simple letters and reports. It became moot when we switched from WP 5.1/Lotus 1-2-3 and a variety of hardware proprietary WP systems like Wangwriters, DisplayWrite, and WPS to (heavily discounted) Office.

What if Microsoft had given us Windows XP 2024?

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Windows

I always turned on Classic View in XP. It looked like Windows 2000, which I found more restful. It also used less resources.

Open source PostgreSQL named DBMS of the year by DB-Engines

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Re: SQLit

I don't necessarily recommend it but multiuser will work quite well with Write-Ahead Logging: SQLite.org as a back-end database for web sites at the hundreds of concurrent users level (Caveat: A web app is a "single user" - I have built stuff that works well with several million rows of data, but admittedly only with a few tens of concurrent users - Which may well be similar to a significant number of applications out there; and these apps can be quickly upsized to PostgreSQL ).

Replication can be enabled with several third party FOSS and commercial tools like rqlite, Lightstream, and LiteSync. For my stuff there are usually "quiet times", so VACUUM/INTO and/or sqldiff work well.

I'm retired from paid work, and only do smallish pro bono stuff now. I started with DEC Rdb and Oracle 5, but ran quickly to SQL Server (4.2 and later), and PostgreSQL when punters realized how much Oracle was going to cost them.

A ship carrying 800 tonnes of Li-Ion batteries caught fire. What could possibly go wrong?

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Re: Time for full LiFePo switch

Lithium-ion batteries are/were used for their favourable energy densities and cost; and because of Chinese owned Patent issues with the much safer and cheaper Li-iron-phosphate (LFP) types - The majority of Chinese Electric vehicles (obviously) use LFP. These patents are about to expire/have expired and it seems likely that for most new vehicles the LFP type will be used. Tesla have already moved more than half their models to LFP, giving a much safer vehicle, but at a cost of ~15% reduced range (probably not an issue for most normal cars).

Many reported electric vehicle fires appear to be from Li-ion batteries from electric scooters charged within households. Perhaps battery swapping, as is common in Taiwan, solves this?

Superuser mostly helped IT, until a BSOD saw him invent a farcical fix

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Facepalm

Re: Our data keeps going missing - we want a hostage

I think it was Oracle 5 or 6 where I learnt (the hard way) to do a SELECT COUNT() from table where something; before using the magic of the the copy/paste buffer to replace the select clause with DELETE FROM or UPDATE —- SET —-. After another brain fade or two I learnt to put the delete/update statement after BEGIN TRANSACTION, then check the table with a select statement before committing (or rolling back) the transaction…

China bans export of rare earth processing kit

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Re: Oops!

It’s simple market price. Gold, which has relatively little practical use (jewellery [~50%], bullion, dentistry, plating, etc.,) can be mined and refined at sub-ppm levels (<g/tonne). Gold is ~$66/g - The cost of getting it is typically less than half of this price. I was told that one of the drivers of its price is the confidence of men in the Middle East and Asia who "put it on their wives to show how wealthy they are". In times of uncertainty it is a useful currency, so prices can go up in both good and bad times.

In contrast neodymium is quite abundant (~$0.12/g), and is mined in China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia - As noted, its extraction can be relatively polluting. Current demand is roughly 10 times the production of gold. China is expected to become a net importer shortly, with countries like Australia being major exporters. It is unlikely that the world will "run out", as it is relatively easy to recycle.

Biden urged to do something about Europe 'unfairly' targeting American tech

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Re: Shall we go back in History

Standing on the shoulders? It might well be argued that Bage significantly improved and extended existing technology: William Strutt, Wikipedia. Good quality, inexpensive steel on an industrial scale was made possible by Henry Bessemer, Wikipedia and others who were mostly Europeans...

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

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Coat

Re: No imagination any more

Some of us find "man" (-k) more than adequate…

Mine’s the one with ”UNIX Power Utilities" in the pocket >>======>

CLIs are simply wizard at character building. Let’s not keep them to ourselves

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Re: NeXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP was good (and [one of?] the first OOP GUI development IDEs?). If you had the money - As a result, the main paying users were spooks and the military, with some academics (who may well have got a substantial discount).

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Gimp

For hours of entertainment

Where many would use a GUI based app, try ffmpeg on a *nix based OS CLI. I have learnt to like it. Most of the entertainment comes from fiddling with the program, and not from playing what you produced. Today I had hours of fun creating and adding chapters to a home movie: See ffmpeg.org:-

 ffmpeg -i INPUT -i FFMETADATAFILE -map_metadata 1 -codec copy OUTPUT 

The 15-inch MacBook Air just nails it

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Gimp

Re: Ok, I'll be down vote bait

Depending on your keyboard: Control-F2 or Fn-Control-F2 - Then use arrow keys to navigate menus.

Polish train maker denies claims its software bricked rolling stock maintained by competitor

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Re: Disappointed

Unless this is stopped it will become a permanent way of doing business.

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

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Re: Exactly what destroyed the UK car industry

Probably true. My first new car in the UK was a Mk1 VW Golf (an early 1.5 LS with the square chrome bumpers) - Its UK manufactured competitors included Allegros, Maxis, and Marinas. Choosing the Golf was not difficult. I’m obviously a stick-in-the-mud, the current car is a Golf 7.5 - My 4th Golf and 6th VW out of the 12 new cars I have owned.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

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Re: speaking of usb

Some manufacturers used different colours, pink and light blue or light green as I recall (Pink/light green was not useful if you had Daltonism). But, not much use if they were at the back of the PC where you couldn't see them.