* Posts by Tim99

1999 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008

What job title would YOU want carved on your gravestone? 'Beloved father, Slayer of Dragons, Register of Domains'

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Coat

I'd like C ERRNO: 130 OWNER DIED (but not yet).

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Re: Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph

It's years since I went there. I remember the lack of adequate road direction signage when I tried to leave. Perhaps the planners thought that once there, nobody would ever want to go somewhere else? These days, SatNavs have taken over...

Systemd 249 release candidate includes better support for immutable OSes and provisioning images

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Unhappy

systemd

That is all >>==============>

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

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Trollface

Re: Mother knows best

I wonder where Samsung got the idea? :-)

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Happy

Re: Mother knows best

You can buy a SiliconDust HDHomeRun and turn it into a real Portable TV with Channels. If you have a spare computer (a RaspberryPi will do), and pay an annual subscription it can run as a powerful DVR that works on most clients. With the included Comskip software recordings can be watched without commercials - Most of our TV watching now happens free of adverts. Thier support is pretty good too... No business relationship... Just a satisfied customer... YMMV...

Tim99 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Got rid of the TV several years ago

I bought a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Connect TV head and record shows onto a computer - It supports the "comskip” video commercial detector. Our SOP is to record a few programs, let comskip run for each recording, then play them back later. Most 60 min programs (after the ads are removed) now run for 45mins.

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Unhappy

Re: My television wants me dead, or just gibbering in a 'special' ward.

I feel your pain. I have just bought a LEOWE TV, the sound is awful - I’m wrestling with an HDMI ARC to analogue audio converter to get sound into a pair of (expensive) 20+ year old B&O active speakers. Apple TV is on another HDMI port. Nothing worked; but after resetting the TV back to factory settings, the sound now works, but the picture breaks up if I use the TV remote to change the volume of a movie from the Apple. So far the only fix is to turn the TV on with its own remote, then put that out of reach, so I only use the Apple remote, which is set to control the TV sound volume; but at least the sound is listenable now…

Microsoft to unveil 'what's next for Windows' ... Rounded corners and what else?

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Trollface

Re: soon we will share one of the most significant updates of Windows of the past decade…

Make Mark Shuttleworth an offer?

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

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Meh

Re: Unfortunately, very true

About 50 years ago I was a Scientific Civil Servant. After doing the job for a while I was trained to interview applicants, and was told a great truth: Most interviewers make up their mind about a candidate in <45 seconds, they then spend the next 45 minutes reinforcing their opinion. I left the job before I had to interview anyone.

Congestion or a Christmas cock-up? A Register reader throws himself under the bus

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Microsoft Databases

I’ve done the MS Access/VB Classic Integer 2 byte database autoincrement field (mis)assignment (32,767) instead of 4 byte long Integer (2 billion). Everything works up to the 32,767 record; then everything dies - Usually after the system has been running OK for a while and the punter has signed it off…

Google drinks from Oracle's pond: SQL system log slurp part of grand data-sharing vision

Tim99 Silver badge
Facepalm

Why would you use this?

When it becomes "business essential" Oracle will charge you (a lot) to use it, and Google will drop it...

Microsoft unveils its latest Cosmos DB lure for developers: More free stuff and an emulator for Linux

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Trollface

Hackers?

"No database administrator can go in there and make changes," said Ramakrishnan.

Crackers? Yes - administrators, No. Joke icon too? >>=======>

Apple is happy to diss the desktop – it knows who's got the most to lose

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Coat

"the freedom to easily and reliably define what can and cannot be done on the desktop" - I think users called them 3270/VT terminals...

Mine's the one with the FORTRAN 77 cards in the pocket >>====>

Parliament demands to know the score with Fujitsu as Post Office Horizon scandal gets inquiry with legal teeth

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Have you ever watched "Yes Minister?"

I was a Civil Servant at the time - It was a documentary series, that happened to be funny.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

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Re: Sometimes though....

Two canaries? Thee wasted thine money thar lad, one would av done…

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Unhappy

Re: Sometimes though....

300 baud - You were spoilt. We had some kit connected by crappy POTS wiring that was set to 110 baud…

Reports link Bill Gates' departure from Microsoft board in 2020 with probe into employee affair

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Coat

Re: Always the ones you least expect

Better than (salmonella) eggs?

Apple announces lossless HD audio at no extra cost, then Amazon Music does too. The ball is now in Spotify's court

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Megaphone

Re: Can you tell the difference?

I'm surprised, I am elderly and have mild brain damage that affects my hearing, I could tell.

It is not as though I played it through Hi-Fi either (Apple 21.5 iMac, internal speakers!). Admittedly I used to go to live concerts, and have a "golden eared" wife (Linn LP12/Naim, until we had to sell it after the brain damage) - Are people just used to crap and that is what they are comfortable with?

This might explain why I'm struggling to get a retailer to take back an upmarket TV with a "Hi-Fi Quality sound bar" which sounds awful - Most of our elderly friends agree, one said it sounds like you are in a cinema or a "home theatre" (and not in a good way), but younger people seem to think it is OK. A quick test with white noise shows a lumpy response in the human vocal range with a fast high frequency drop off, interestingly, connecting decent quality speakers to the analogue output shows a similar effect, so it seems it is the audio amp.

>>=========> Because that is what the TV sounds like...

RIP Spencer Silver: Inventor of the Post-it Note, aka the office password reminder, dies

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Facepalm

RIP Spencer

A truly useful tool, but… I worked for an organization who’s security minded staff in the payroll office stuck the Post-it notes with their password *under* their keyboards - It was just almost all of the rest of the staff who put them on their monitor bezels…

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Into the rear seat?

I was rear-ended on the motorway when my vehicle was stationary (a pedestrian ran across the carriageway about 5 vehicles in front and I was the last driver to stop). The driver of a car about 50 metres behind was on the phone and "didn't see that the traffic had stopped". Even though he applied the brakes, he hit my car at about 50mph. I was wearing a seat belt, but had a major concussion caused by my head hitting the back window (my seat collapsed). I'm fairly sure that in a major accident the driver and passenger could finish up anywhere, particularly if they are not wearing a seatbelt.

The quest for faster Python: Pyston returns to open source, Facebook releases Cinder, or should devs just use PyPy?

Tim99 Silver badge
Unhappy

Yes, and 8 gigabytes of frameworks to write it...

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

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Windows

If you really must…

For cross-platform, and don’t mind paying, XOJO might be worth a look (it used to be REALbasic).

Caveat: I stopped using VB at V4/5, but it was OK for prototyping screens to show to a punter. The included Crystal Reports was dreadful, and used a lot of memory - Surprisingly for simple CRUD applications with reports, MS Access was smaller and faster. We started prototyping with Access, and left a prototype with a customer (intending to move them to Oracle or whatever), until he said "Why is it just a prototype? We have tried it in production, and it is OK"; we moved him a SQL Server 4.2/6.0 backend (stored procedures, transactions, etc.) In 1996 we used the same ideas with the Access runtime, and sold them as shrink-wrap - I’m retired now, the company is still around, and they are still in use (with the current versions of Access and SQL Server). They work well for up to 50 concurrent users and 10s of millions of rows…

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Re: Don't forget the users with reading difficulties

I *like* Arial (except for your type of edge case) - It will probably look about the same on Windows, Mac, Linux, tablets, phones...

Calibri - Stuffing up cross-platform compatibility since Vista and MS Office 2007.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: WA roundabouts

Yep, years ago I took a (holiday) trip with a company car from Perth to Derby via Carnarvon, Karratha, Hedland, and Broome with a few side trips (>8,000 km in total) with almost no traffic lights.

On the other hand, two weeks ago, I went on a shopping expedition with Mrs Tim99 from Mandurah to Osborne Park, via Melville on Highway 1 (~80 km) and would have gone through >50 sets of lights.

The population of WA is ~2.6 million, with >2.1 million living in Greater Perth.

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: WA roundabouts

About 1992, I commuted several times a week through the suburbs for about 10 years, but the City of Perth certainly had roundabouts before that. Possibly the first ones were the on the Causeway crossing Heirisson Island in the 1950s, but I’m not sure that they count - They are/were teardrop shaped as the main bridge carriageways weren’t crossed by traffic. Anyway, they were only for the posh people who could take a vehicle into the City :-) These days the Island has traffic lights so people "know" when to move.

I now live in a retirement village, and a number of "rural" residents will take a 6 km diversion to avoid one a couple of kms away that has a minor road crossing a dual carriageway.

Tim99 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Er ...

Yes, and when WA introduced one of the first suburban roundabouts (Yangebup?) most of the locals stopped at the white line and waited for somebody else to move. Sometimes the traffic was stationary on all four entrances and only moved when a driver who had the right-of way waved the next vehicle around the roundabout across...

In the Old Dart, I find that when this old fart is in a hire car with unfamiliar controls, the High Wycombe roundabout is "challenging" - Instead of signalling appropriately, the windscreen gets wiped,...

Terror of the adtech industry iOS 14.5 has landed, and Siri can answer your calls ... though she/he can't hang up

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Trollface

Re: So if

But then again, do you trust Google not to snoop on the call?

Maybe this should be a Joke or a Big Brother icon?? >>====>

We seem to have materialized in a universe in which Barney the Purple Dinosaur is designing iPhones for Apple

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

There, there

Those of us who were left behind by fashion can still order grey iThings...

Oh hello. Haven't heard much from you lately: Linux veteran Slackware rides again with a beta of version 15

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Trollface

Linux?

What is this Linux of which you write? Some of us use(d) BSD, and like it...

British gambling giant Betfred told to pay stiffed winner £1.7m jackpot after claiming 'software problem'

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Unhappy

No, that is not adequate - It needs the addition of "if it lands on its edge, you pay us twice your accumulated stake"...

Diary of a report writer and his big break into bad business

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Windows

Re: A (La)TeX user writes:

"Or WordPad?" : A very long time ago we asked our Microsoft Rep if we could have a version of WordPad with a spell checker (We thought we were large and important). He told us that if such a thing was available no-one would buy Word. I laughed thinking he was joking, he wasn't.

I'm retired now and use TextEdit for many things, sometimes I even turn on "Make Rich Text". If I need anything fancier "Pages" will do for most of it.

Mac OS X at 20: A rocky start, but it got the fundamentals right for a macOS future

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Gimp

Re: I don't *love* MacOS, but I do like...

I agree. I rotate 3 TM backup disks, which have saved me from self-inflicted brain-fade on a couple of occasions; in particular being able to put back deleted emails. BUT, because I have earnt my paranoia, I have 3 Rotated Carbon Copy Cloner bootable back-ups too.

Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: I wonder...

The half your age +7 was sanctioned by the church in feudal times. The rationale was that males could (and did) marry at 14, and females at 12. These were typically to consolidate political ties between important families. Children could be betrothed at 7 years old. This would mean that two 14 year-olds could get married. It then worked out at 20&17; 30&22; 40&27; 50&32; 60&37; and 70&42. This may well have been because of relatively low life expectancy; likelihood of death in childbirth; and high mortality rates for children, and the need to ensure succession.

SAP exec reminds the world that Microsoft is a customer

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Flame

Re: A useful turn of phrase

A group I was in had a similar concept we called "fire fighting" management. Everybody spent so much time rushing from one incident to another "putting out individual fires" that there were no resources to fireproof the business.

After running a couple of businesses, I expanded that idea to try and quantify it - My model was based on the 80:20 rule, along the lines that once you reached a 20% stuff-up quotient you’d spend 80% of your time and resources on the 20%. It appeared to have been frighteningly reliable.

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Back in the old days

My (handwritten) passport from the 1970s has "Government Service" in the relevant field. It probably covered everyone from the nice lady at the Post Office who sold you a stamp to David Callan. I think my favourite classification at the time was "Gentleman", which meant access to sufficient wealth to not need "employment".

SQL now a dirty word for Oracle, at least in cloudy data warehouses

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Coat

Re: Not the only dirty word

Oracle has been a dirty word for MySQL users (and Java devs) users for quite some time. FTFY

Microsoft customers locked out of Teams, Office, Xbox, Dynamics – and Azure Active Directory breakdown blamed

Tim99 Silver badge

Not all bad?

I have a mail account address that I give out to certain people expecting it to be spammed. Normally it gets about 20 spam messages (a rule sends almost all straight to junk) but yesterday it had just normal mail. This morning the spam is back, not a coincidence?

A Code War has replaced The Cold War. And right now we’re losing it

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" But I don't see any way of doing that without making professional development so onerous that 90%+ of software companies fold, and the rest start charging 10x current prices."

"You make that sound like a bad thing" (Gene Hunt - Life on Mars). See also: Sturgeon's Revelation"...

Soft-shell robot uses snailfish features to sail though Mariana Trench stress test

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Coat

Re: Sharks with lasers?

It has the crocodile shown in the second part of the video as a bodyguard?

The sooner AI stops trying to mimic human intelligence, the better – as there isn't any

Tim99 Silver badge
Devil

Re: Smells like, "dog turds"?

A number of years ago my neighbour was/is a vegetarian. So was her dog. The dog didn't seem to like me much until I started surreptitiously feeding it small pieces of my bacon sandwiches. Well my homemade bread was organic & vegetarian...

Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling – and may even offer a paid-for, no-ad version

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Big Brother

Re: Results

I use DDG, and can't remember the last time I used Google directly. DDG supports bangs! which are reasonably anonymous: e.g. searchtext !g does a Google search; searchtext !w a Wikipedia search. There are thousands of others...

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

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Re: the origin of the -man suffix

How about innies and outies?

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Childcatcher

Re: the origin of the -man suffix

Old/Middle English wifman - "female adult person", via "female head of household" became wife. "World” also from wer; meant age, or concerns, or affairs, or interests, or business, of male humans - Perhaps we should replace that with “global"?

Make and female connectors, could we call them plugs and sockets? Asking for a friend.

BOFH: 7 jars of Marmite, a laptop and a good time

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Where can I find a link

I offered a colleague some "Gentleman’s Relish" on toast, when he claimed the superiority of Vegemite. He didn’t finish it, and the subject was never mentioned again...

Half a million stolen French medical records, drowned in feeble excuses

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Re: Alistair, you have my sympathies

Prostate problems - Mine was also >600mL, full for much of the time, and waking up for 4-5 trips every night. Green-light laser treatment has apparently fixed it, but the nice surgeon told me to expect further treatment "sometime in your 80s" - So something to look forward too...

Planespotters’ weekends turn traumatic as engine pieces fall from the sky in the Netherlands and the US

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: RE: engine failure

Unfortunately they went broke: Wikipedia link...

Australian government fights Facebook news ban by threatening 0.01% of Zuck's ad revenue

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Re: The problem is

Some of us remember users who thought the internet was a big blue 'e'. Things haven’t improved much...