I'd do something much worse: Prosecute them and, if guilty, imprison them for a year. Then whilst they are imprisoned investigate them using "proceeds of crime" legislation and, if there is evidence, confiscate all of their assets; including all wealth transferred to pensions, other businesses, and family members. Then release them to live with the rest of us.
Posts by Tim99
2000 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008
Page:
Palantir's CEO calls 'woke' a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world'
Florida man gets 6 years behind bars for flogging fake Cisco kit to US military
Oracle Fusion rollout costs 15 times council's estimates in SAP rip-'n-replace

Reality
My late father was the Treasurer of a UK local authority in the late 1960s. They set up a system (Sperry??) that managed the Council Rates, payroll, and purchases. It worked. Specialist training was required for a couple of staff, and the population served was relatively small (in the 10s of thousands), but I don't think the basic requirements have become much more complicated since then.
Throwflame launches fire-spitting robo-dog from Hell
Rarest, strangest, form of Windows saved techie from moment of security madness


Simpler times
In the mid-to-late-80s a service engineer doing routine maintenance on one of our analytical instrument told the operator that his previous customer in the US had let him copy "Leisure Suit Larry", and he had the disk with him. After they had installed it, people noticed that other networked PC based instruments were "running funny". A couple of days later, after I had got everything cleared and working, "keeping viruses off the computers" was added to my job specification...
Qt Ubuntu 24.04 betas show that there's room to innovate


The Urban Dictionary has several relevant definitions
1. An African phrase meaning "humanity towards others"
2. Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't configure Debian"
I like the first, the second has more than a little truth. I like Devuan, but in retirement tend to use Raspberry Pi OS light and Mac OS.
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Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

Re: Building software is hard...
My late father was a senior local government officer. He said that the worst NIMBYs were often the last people to move into the village/town. Their attitude was "I have moved in because I like what I saw, now nothing must change". This applied even if their house was new - Now, no one else should be allowed to build a new house. They were always the ones campaigning against the new bypass, in-spite of the fact that most of the rest of the village/town had been pleading for one for years...
Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff

Re: Bolts for Boeing
They relied on foreign scientists who had developed the foreign technology during WW2: Wernher von Braun, Wikipedia.
Puppies, kittens, data at risk after 'cyber incident' at veterinary giant
How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT
Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so
Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server


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
'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit
They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

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

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
Gelsinger splits Intel in two to advance foundry vision
Australian supercomputer 'Taingiwilta' comes online this year with [REDACTED] inside
Europe's data protection laws cut data storage by making information-wrangling pricier
A visa to fill Australia's empty tech jobs is getting more expensive, but maybe better value
Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it
Unit4 software's budget bungle leaves schools counting the cost


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
Chinese Coathanger malware hung out to dry by Dutch defense department

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

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


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'


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

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.

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
Microsoft admits issues with Windows 10 patch almost 2 months after release
US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050

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).

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


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


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


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
Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed
AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

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


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

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?

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?