* Posts by Tim99

2000 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Tim99 Silver badge
Devil

Manglement

Rule #1: I went on a public service senior managers course about 30 years ago. One of the lecturers told us a valuable saw: The main purpose of most documents generated in an organization is to act as a weapon - The weapon can be defensive or offensive, and often can be both...

Apple takes $9m kick down under after bricking iPhones

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Fanboi Tax

I have Apple kit and have been around IT type stuff since 1971. I maybe technically ignorant, having spent 40 odd years installing, programming, specifying and purchasing this sort of thing. I am also quite cynical. You may not be aware that all you have in life is time - You can trade your time to earn money, or spend time to save money, or use money so that you can have more time to do something else. I am retired and really can’t be arsed to spend the time I have left pratting around trying to get someone’s idea of a consumer device to actually do what the manufacturer tells me it can do.

The Apple stuff that I have generally “just works”, but I may be an edge case - On the rare occasions that my iMac doesn’t do what I want, I can go and do technical Unixy things with the CLI; my phone and iPad do pretty much everything that I would expect without fiddling, and I really don’t want to root-kit them.

Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

Tim99 Silver badge

The Bruce Willis film RED

Willis has to break into the CIA headquarters - He disguises himself as a General and descends to a hidden floor in an lift. To get to the highly secret archives he has to open a door with an unbreakable lock that has an access code that changes every 6 hours. He kicks through the plasterboard wall at the side of the door to get to the mechanism and opens the door in about 5 seconds.

Tech rookie put decimal point in wrong place, cost insurer zillions

Tim99 Silver badge
Facepalm

Old school

I asked a subordinate to order some preprinted forms that we used for data capture (Not everyone had a computer back in the day, so many staff filled in the form with a pen and the form was used to enter information into an Oracle database). I countersigned the order, unfortunately it was for 500 reams of paper and not the 500 sheets (1 ream) that we needed. We were still using the excess as scrap paper when I left 2 years later - By which time most of the staff had computers, so there was little need for the form anyway.

Did you test that? No, I thought you tested it. Now customers have it and it doesn't work

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: The Smell....

@Sgt_Oddball

You picked up a red-haired transvestite? Or a portable stove?

Amazon can't or won't collect sales tax in Australia

Tim99 Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Eh go figure buy locally manufactured anyway

@Data source #58479374

...because terrorists! (Warning: sarcasm/cynicism alerts).

Tim99 Silver badge

How big is the markup?

Last year I was looking for an unusual 2:1 audio connector/splitter to be delivered to Oz. The prices I got from the internet were: Sydney retailer AU$29:99 + AU$15 p&p (to Western Australia); USA (most did not ship to Oz) US$12:00 + US$30 p&p; Mainland China AU$6:00 including p&p.

The item arrived in the post from China a week later, I tested it and installed it, and it is still working. From photos on their websites of the US and AU companies, the item appeared identical.

Chinese president Xi seeks innovation independence

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: A President-For-Life Communist Country? Read Some History Please.

My probably incorrect theory: China is, and has been for the last few Millenia, a feudal society.

The appointment of rulers may have changed a bit. Instead of an emperor, court, and mandarins, there is now a President, the Communist Party of China with its Standing committee (Lords) and the party itself. The party membership is about 7% of the population. It might be argued that a number of Asian countries have similar power structures based on political parties or ruling families. These countries tend to be relatively stable as their populations appear to embrace an accepted structured authoritarianism. Changes in the leadership have little immediate effect on much of the population, allowing long term planning.

NAB mainframe turns its TOESUP* after power outage, offline 7 hours

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

So

Nothing to do with underinvestment, offshoring, and not having any qualified experienced local support staff then?

Mine has a copy of the children's illustrated pocket-guide to "Your Business is IT - Not Traditional Banking" in the pocket >>===>

BOFH: Their bright orange plumage warns other species, 'Back off! I'm dangerous!'

Tim99 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Hazard creation

I was attempting to stay awake in a recent hour-long H&S induction, before I was allowed into a business to conduct an assessment of their technical competence. We had been told to comply with a number of important safety procedures including moving our cars because we had driven directly into the marked visitor parking parking spots instead of reversing in. My colleague asked an obvious question, which was: What the greatest cause of accidents that had caused injury or lost time. The answer was that two people had been injured, one seriously with a broken ankle and wrist, and another person had a back injury, both caused by them falling off the kerb outside the emergency exit when they were evacuating the building as a result of the most recent H&S practice evacuation that had been arranged by the person running the induction - He seemed unaware of the concept of irony...

LG chairman Koo Bon-moo dies, aged 73

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Lucky Goldstar - What's the 'Star' for? - I only ever remember LG for being first at this:

@Dave Rickmers

I too have an LG set, the picture is excellent, but we might have to agree to disagree about how good WebOS is - The system is slow; and the LG App store in Oz is very limited. I too use a third party content/app provider box.

Tim99 Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Lucky Goldstar - What's the 'Star' for? - I only ever remember LG for being first at this:

What is it about "smart" TVs anyway? The software is invariably third rate and the GUI even worse. Why can we just buy a decent quality large screen with say 3 HDMI inputs, a decent audio output, volume control and an on/off switch. Almost everyone's TV has some mix of FOX, Netflix, Stan, Apple, Google or BlueRay devices attached which the punter uses regularly, and many of them offer live TV as well.

Silly me! There would be no reason to update the whole TV when the newest shiny comes out, rather than just replacing the input device.

Want to know what an organisation is really like? Visit the restroom

Tim99 Silver badge
Stop

Re: We need some ...

In Oz, I have recently starting to see two new signs: One showing someone standing upright on the seat facing the cistern with a red cross against the picture - The other is similar, but has the person standing on the seat squatting and facing away from the cistern, again with a red cross. I am hoping to see additional signs to reinforce these with a male gendered person sign standing in front of the bowl with a relevant stream, and another with a person sitting directly on the seat facing forward - Both with a green tick by them.

Facilities with these signs also tend to have a colour chart by the cistern: Ranging from water-white with a suggestion that you might be drinking too much fluid, through the normal healthy ranges of urine-yellow, then to dark-brown with the suggestion that you should drink some water immediately, and the last colour a very dark-red/brown with a suggestion that you seek medical help.

Fortunately, I have no idea what similar signs in the female gendered facilities might look like.

Blighty's super-duper F-35B fighter jets are due to arrive in a few weeks

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Perfect for the job?

@Peter2

My father flew in Mosquito bombers towards the end of the War. They could, and did, bomb from high altitudes; the aircraft was very fast and generally could avoid fighters without having to “hedge hop”. Relative performances were roughly Lancaster: Bomb load ~6-7 tons (modified 10 tons for Grand Slam weapon), typical operational height 12,000-20,000 ft with a maximum loaded height of a bit higher, cruise speed ~200 mph, maximum speed 280-310 mph with a crew of 7; B17 Flying Fortress: Bomb load ~2 tons (~3.5 tons short range), operational height typically ~25,000 ft, service ceiling ~35,000 ft, cruise speed ~180 mph, maximum speed~290mph, crew of 10; Mosquito: Bomb load up to 1.8 tons, service ceiling: 37,000 ft, Cruising speed >280mph, maximum speed at altitude 380-415 mph, with a crew of 2.

Before the Mosquito he flew in American derived Medium/Attack bombers like the Martin Baltimore: Bomb load <1 ton, 305 mph at 11,600 ft, cruise speed: 224 mph with a crew of 4; and the Douglas Boston: Bomb load 1.8 tons, cruise speed: 256 mph, maximum speed 317 mph at 10,700 ft, service ceiling: 23,700 ft, with a crew of 3.

All of these aircraft could perform low level raids, but it was obviously much less common with the bigger bombers. The heavy bomber/Mosquito comparison has been based on the higher speed and relative simplicity of the Mosquito allowing the aircraft to perform a mission into Germany, return and be refuelled/rearmed and then carry out another missions and return in about the same time as the (4-engined) Lancaster. If the aircraft was shot down the loss was 2 crew instead of 7, and a much less expensive 2-engined aeroplane.

Tim99 Silver badge

Prototype bombsight

My father was a Observer/Bombing Leader in WWII and in late 1945-1946 was training bomb-aimers at Lough Neagh. He had a photograph of the "original" bomb aiming device marked "SECRET". It was cruder than the ones used in the raid, being just a piece of plywood with the similar two nails at the front, but instead of the round hole eyepiece there were another two nails separated by ~5mm. From its fixed geometry and several extra nail-holes, he thought that it might have been used as a prototype at Ladybower.

My father had signed up for the duration and was given an offer to stay on, but after 6 years abroad he wanted to be demobbed. After he died I gave the photograph, and other items like log books and photographs to "his" 55 Squadron at their Museum which was the time based at RAF Marham - They had an excellent display including the operational charts of their refuelling of the Vulcan bombing mission to the Falklands. The Squadron was later disbanded/transferred to RAF Brize Norton for training Vickers VC1/Lockheed TriStar crews, and then reformed at RAF Cranwell for weapons systems officers training, and now disbanded again, so I don't know what happened to the collection.

Microsoft returns to Valley of Death? Cheap Surface threatens the hardware show

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Low Cost? at $499!

Obviously low cost compared to iPad, but all Apple major products are massively over priced for what you get.

Surely the US iPad starts at "From $329" or $170 cheaper - Or €369 in Ireland including 23% VAT?

Facebook Android app caught seeking 'superuser' clearance

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Sorry, but it's a very poor sensationalist article

"BUT "superuser" is a feature *only* on rooted android phones. Facebook pointed this out in their response, why couldn't el reg?

You do know that the TLA's are particularly interested in people who root their android device? Obviously the only reason someone would want to do that is to avoid the "normal" tracking built into any Google based system, so they are probably potential terrorists...

You love Systemd – you just don't know it yet, wink Red Hat bods

Tim99 Silver badge
Trollface

How can we make money?

A dilemma for a Really Enterprise Dependant Huge Applications Technology company - The technology they provide is open, so almost anyone could supply and support it. To continue growing, and maintain a healthy profit they could consider locking their existing customer base in; but they need to stop other suppliers moving in, who might offer a better and cheaper alternative, so they would like more control of the whole ecosystem. The scene: An imaginary high-level meeting somewhere - The agenda: Let's turn Linux into Windows - That makes a lot of money:-

Q: Windows is a monopoly, so how are we going to monopolise something that is free and open, because we will have to supply source code for anything that will do that? A: We make it convoluted and obtuse, then we will be the only people with the resources to offer it commercially; and to make certain, we keep changing it with dependencies to "our" stuff everywhere - Like Microsoft did with the Registry.

Q: How are we going to sell that idea? A: Well, we could create a problem and solve it - The script kiddies who like this stuff, keep fiddling with things and rebooting all of the time. They don't appear to understand the existing systems - Sell the idea they do not need to know why *NIX actually works.

Q: *NIX is designed to be dependable, and go for long periods without rebooting, How do we get around that. A: That is not the point, the kids don't know that; we can sell them the idea that a minute or two saved every time that they reboot is worth it, because they reboot lots of times in every session - They are mostly running single user laptops, and not big multi-user systems, so they might think that that is important - If there is somebody who realises that this is trivial, we sell them the idea of creating and destroying containers or stopping and starting VMs.

Q: OK, you have sold the concept, how are we going to make it happen? A: Well, you know that we contribute quite a lot to "open" stuff. Let's employ someone with a reputation for producing fragile, barely functioning stuff for desktop systems, and tell them that we need a "fast and agile" approach to create "more advanced" desktop style systems - They would lead a team that will spread this everywhere. I think I know someone who can do it - We can have almost all of the enterprise market.

Q: What about the other large players, surely they can foil our plan? A: No, they won't want to, they are all big companies and can see the benefit of keeping newer, efficient competitors out of the market. Some of them sell equipment and system-wide consulting, so they might just use our stuff with a suitable discount/mark-up structure anyway.

Windows Notepad fixed after 33 years: Now it finally handles Unix, Mac OS line endings

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Maybe a bit late?

Now that I hardly use Windows at all, you mean that I won't have to open/edit text files with the Norton/Midnight Commander editors?

Password re-use is dangerous, right? So what about stopping it with password-sharing?

Tim99 Silver badge
Pirate

Password manager?

Some stuff really needs security, some not so much.

I'm retired and now, and only have 4 mail accounts - Three of them are for different levels of "I don't care"; going from total crap (Gmail) through an old Hotmail account, up to an old ISP's $20/year one. Google seems to do a reasonable job of filtering crap, MS less so; and the ISP is really only used as the security account for Gmail and Hotmail and a few websites (about 6). The only one I really care about has a pwd of 13 chars, which I have had for at least 12 years, and funnily enough does not seem to have ever been compromised, and does not see any spam. I also have a Facebook account which I log into occasionally with no details other than my name, it has no "friends" either, but seems to occasionally generate crap.

I do not use Gmail, etc., to log into other accounts; and use a password generator which seems to work well - If I lose the pwd on these I really don't care as I could just generate a new account or use the recovery through the ISP. I have not put my real "Mother's Name", etc., anywhere and seem to have few problems.

A retired friend who used to be contractor to various banks thought I was paranoid (I am), but was recently compromised with a planted key logger. I suspect that he was deliberately spearfished through a Windows machine, I believe he now uses an iPad for anything important...

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Pressure?

Mrs Tim99 and I travelled on it from Heathrow to Miami via Washington and back in 1989 - It reallly did not feel cramped and uncomfortable. There was no headroom when standing (I'm 5'8") but plenty of legroom. The aircraft was refuelled in Washington before the Miami leg, and during refueling we all transferred to a luxury bus that had a cabin that was jacked up level to the door. According to the pilot the Washington-Miami leg was the fastest that the aircraft went in normal service, the fuel loading was low and when went there were a number of empty seats. For “noise regulation” the acceleration was reduced after take off, and the feeling that you had was that the aircraft was falling - We had been warned by the pilot to expect that, otherwise it felt like we were about to crash.

We stayed in a hotel on Miami Beach, and the next morning Concorde went over the hotel, we were by the swimming pool, and it was indeed really loud (but a good loud). I suspect that if you listened to it every day, it would not be so much fun.

IBM Australia to end on-shore software support

Tim99 Silver badge
WTF?

WTF?

That is all.

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, oi oi oi! Tech zillionaire Ray's backdoor crypto for the Feds is Clipper chip v2

Tim99 Silver badge
Facepalm

How much damage does he want to do to society?

First Lotus Notes and CTO at Microsoft, now this...

Double double, soil and trouble, fire burn and heat shield bubble: NASA cracks rover, has dirty talk with ESA

Tim99 Silver badge
Alien

Re: Why aren't we digging deep for signs of life?

Because the Martians wouldn't like it?

'Alexa, listen in on my every word and send it all to a shady developer'

Tim99 Silver badge
Joke

You haven't seen adverts for septic tank cleaner because the Echos know that you don't have a septic tank? Or, maybe they think that you are terrorist serial killers who need the cleaner to dispose of bits of bodies, and are getting more evidence before contacting the authorities?

I used the "Joke Alert" instead of "Big Brother" icon >>===>

Medic! Orangeworm malware targets hospitals worldwide

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Windows

Have an upvote. I'd agree that could be a good way to go, and that was the how some equipment I used in the late 1970s worked. When IBM PCs running DOS came out, almost all manufacturers switched to them within a few years. The relative cost was <$5K compared with $20K-$50K, which was a significant chunk of the systems' $100K-$1M+ cost. I linked a lot of them with MS/IBM PC-LAN networking or Netware, sometimes talking to central minicomputers.

The new stuff that I have seen costs >$20K (sometimes >$400K) and they have their own built in high-res touch-tablet type screens with their own CPU ARM? and memory, upgrades are normally loaded from a USB stick. The user follows friendly on-screen prompts to set up and operate the instrument. The instrument has its own IP address, and a number of instruments can send data to one or more Windows PCs for processing.

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Windows

I have seen several specialist manufacturers move their instrument control software away from Windows, these instruments now have their own custom software and act as web servers - Windows is now only used by the manufacturer to manipulate and display captured data.

It's not you, it's Big G: Sneaky spammers slip strangers spoofed spam, swamp Gmail sent files

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

email:Gmail: just say no. FTFY

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

Tim99 Silver badge

"weekend in Norfolk at a dyke-jumping contest." Black Dyke band?

Don’t fight automation software for control, just turn it off. FAST

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: I'll still be driving myself thanks.

@jake

My £5,000 to £1,000 was a poor illustrative example. If the autonomous car does happen, it will probably be made in China by someone you have not heard of, and the cost is of a "normal" vehicle is possibly more likely to be >£10,000 p.a.

I remember the start of a previous major disruption, the mobile phone - Initially only very few people had them, I was working in technology and bought my first one ~25 years ago, now almost everybody has them - The are often rented on a plan at perhaps £300 -£1,000 a year and, whether we like it or not, have radically changed society. The autonomous car (if it happens!) will cause a bigger change.

Your TV room example is poor, initially they were in a shared room (with your family) and many people did rent TVs; now they are so cheap that most of us have more than one, and the young might use their smart phone anyway. The cost of a private bathroom/toilet (which for most of us is shared within the household) is much less. The shared kitchen is becoming a reality for the urban young because they are starting to use their mobile phones to order meals from "dark kitchens" and many do not cook for themselves (I don't count a microwavable meal as cooking) - Another, perhaps, unforeseen product of the disruption caused by mobile phones. I know several young urban dwellers who don't have a car, and use Uber, again another disruption caused by the phone...

I did not say I liked the idea of the autonomous car, but if we survive the next 20 years (I won't be around then), it is inevitable - Moores Law generally applies to almost all technology.

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: I'll still be driving myself thanks.

If we work on a couple of (big) assumptions, your self-drive car may be very expensive, and for most people could become a luxury. Assume a basic car costs about the same - Most of them will almost certainly be electric with a realistic range of at least 200 miles and an average journey distance of <20 miles, and very much more reliable and cheaper to run, except for the battery which will be replaceable. The service life of the vehicle may be much longer. If we assume that most vehicles are currently used for at most 10% of the time, and they spend most of their time parked somewhere (at home or work), so we could consider that 5 people can use the vehicle, which will come to them, and they don't have to park it; the economics of car ownership change dramatically. Insurance is much cheaper, fuel costs are lower, you don't need to park, and you don't need a garage at home. Cities will need fewer roads and almost no parking areas. If we also assume that more work will be done remotely, the need to travel to and from work will also be reduced. Would you pay more than £5,000 a year for a car when sharing an autonomous vehicle could cost less than £1,000?

Microsoft has designed an Arm Linux IoT cloud chip. Repeat, an Arm Linux IoT cloud chip

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

So

Another attempt to further entrench propriety lock down.

'I crashed AOL for 19 hours and messed up global email for a week'

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Grumble grumble

When I started using electronic mail in the 1970s we knew our recipients personally - If the message was important, we used to telephone them to see if they had received it; or to ask them to log in and read it. I only had to make a *couple* of transatlantic calls...

Windows Admin Center: Vulture gets claws on browser-based server admin

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

MS SBS

I'm old now and the memory may be going, but, didn't MS Small business Server include an adequate remote web base management tool 15-20 years ago? It was basic, but covered most of the normal management tasks for Workgroups of up to 50 users, and seemed to be quite reliable. I suspect it was killed off to appease the larger MS Service Partners, and to encourage the rush to MS's idea of the cloud.

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Bob Newhart

Bob had it right - "You set fire to it!".

A developer always pays their technical debts – oh, every penny... but never a groat more

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand!

We use to run projects based on the "Rule of Two":-

Write code be twice as easy to understand than the team is capable of producing. Never put two or more expressions in the same line. Never write a function that addresses two or more business rules. Always write at least two lines of documentation for every function (Or, even every line of code). Always wait for at least version two of the tools that you are going to use to put software into a production environment. Stop writing code at two o'clock in the afternoon, then use the next two hours to check it (Then, if necessary, have a meeting about it - Which will be short because everyone wants to go home/down the pub).

'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Why did they bother?

@Teiwaz

Thanks for reminding me. I remember my father tuning our TV onto a different channel from the BBC, so we could watch Anglia TV starting. Now I feel really old...

Azure needs extra security controls before it's fit for government use, says Australia

Tim99 Silver badge
Big Brother

Can we slurp?

Please allow all other Departments information available to be available to us for "checking". Love, The Department of Defence Home Affairs.

My PC makes ‘negative energy waves’, said user, then demanded fix

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: "And bluetooth with Win10 is an iffy affair"

@kezersoze

I an old and use Unix, and may be crazy or demented; but with the exception of the Turbo button, your ex-colleague could well have been right. I can sit down at a terminal and a lot of the *NIX stuff that I used back then still works - Which is just as well as my failing memory needs only to be able to recall apropos "something close to what I want" (and then maybe whatis and man). I'm not sure if I brought a coat with me - Do any of them have K&R in the pocket? >>===>

Terix boss thrown in the cooler for TWO years for peddling pirated Oracle firmware, code patches

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered Am I

Starts from the top? One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison, allegedly.

Mad March Meltdown! Microsoft's patch for a patch for a patch may need another patch

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

@Carl D

I am retired now and only use Windows in a VM - On an iMac in my case. I very occasionally run Windows 10 (the unlicenced version that nags you to get a licence); Windows XP (offline) about every 2 weeks; and less frequently Windows 2000, and FreeDOS.

Disclaimer: I spent a long time writing software, often with Microsoft stuff, but started to cut down the MS habit when Vista came out, and suspect that I will never give MS any more money, ever again...

What's silent but violent and costs $250m? Yes, it's Lockheed Martin's super-quiet, supersonic X-plane for NASA

Tim99 Silver badge
Trollface

Only $247.5m?

Shirley, just the first payment? Total budget a minimum of $25 billion? Or is this an exception after the military get to give their input?

Microsoft Australia flicks switch on Protected Azure-for-Gov service

Tim99 Silver badge
Big Brother

Microsoft and CLOUD

I know that we in Oz are members of five eyes, and that most of our data is slurped by the NSA, etc., but have the Government and Microsoft considered the US CLOUD Act passed last week?

The CLOUD Act adds provisions to address foreign data privacy laws preventing providers from producing data stored abroad to U.S. authorities. The Act applies when the US has an agreement with a “qualifying foreign government” to address conflicts of law with “qualifying foreign countries” - But: US Courts must consider: the investigative interests of the US governmental entity seeking the disclosure and the importance of the information to the investigation; the foreign government’s interest in preventing the disclosure; the risk of penalties on the provider (or its employees) as a result of the conflict; the location and nationality of the subject of the warrant and their connection to the United States; the nature and extent of the provider’s ties to and presence in the United States; and the availability of alternate means of disclosure.

A good bit is: "This is available only if the provider must reasonably believe that the subject of the warrant is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States or located in the United States." Seeing what US prosecutors do, this inspires confidence?

More ad-versarial tech: Mozilla to pop limited ad blocker into Firefox

Tim99 Silver badge

@JakeMS

I was initially very pleased with a combination of uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger on FireFox/macOS (and a custom hosts file), but found after using it for a while, I was getting some weird renderings and occasional hangs which needed a page refresh or even restarting the browser. I have replaced them with DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials and seem to get effective filtering/blocking without problems. The blocker also works well on Safari and, as mentioned in the article, the Page Reader usually gives a nicely formatted clean page - This page can be directly printed to PDF which is handy for those of us with fading eyesight.

Oracle sued over claims of shoddy service, licensing designed to force adoption of its kit

Tim99 Silver badge

An old saw

I feel some sympathy with the customers, but I have published this here before: Q: What do you call Oracle customers? - A: Hostages.

It would seem an act of self preservation to only use (or construct) systems that do not use the Oracle stack anywhere, as they will suck you further into their alligator infested swamp. It may be better to use a "less capable" database and pay extra for the hardware to run it.

Prof Stephen Hawking's ashes will be interred alongside Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin

Tim99 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "Science admits when it's wrong."

"Witness the idiotic antics of the Dietary Health field."

I'm fairly sure that much of "Dietary Health" information is "Marketing" and not "Science" - Particularly that which is in populist media...

Nest reveals the first truly connected home

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

"Sounds awful"

Marvin the paranoid Android.

Transport for NSW scrambles to patch servers missing fixes released in 2007

Tim99 Silver badge
Windows

Eh?

"as while offshore labour will be involved it can only do so much when on-premises mission-critical servers require reboots. " Well there's your problem. I'm so old, I can remember when IBM's staff were all locals, and the only offshore people your organization saw were very senior specialists that they occasionally flew in...

Developers dread Visual Basic 6, IBM Db2, SharePoint - survey

Tim99 Silver badge
Pint

VB

VB in Oz has a better known meaning - A mass market beer >>====> This fuelled many a Friday "work" afternoon when VB6 was new and shiny, helping to numb the pain of those who were transitioning from VB4/5. If you want staff to learn to "like" VB6, get them to do a couple of projects with VBScript.