Posts by Harry WWC

Pay attention, class: Today you’ll learn the wrong way to turn things off

"eject tape" button on a 6300 VAX

I was managing a VAX 6300 in the early 90s, but of course I needed the assistance of the night-operators (who were more familiar with the as/400) to run the nightly backups.

my predecessor had built a nice interactive menu system to manage the backups in the All-in-1 system, but one particular night-op couldn't be bothered going back to his terminal to select the (next) menu item to rewind and eject the tape, and found an "eject" button near the tape unit. It was actually the "Halt" switch that did a hard reset on the machine, and as the machine booted it would rewind and eject the tape.

After a while I noted the short uptimes (less than 12 hours) were after the particular operator was on the late shift, and hung around to talk to him and ask what gives with the reboots. He didn't know, he wasn't (knowingly) rebooting the system, so I asked him to show me what he did each night. And got to the part where he would press the magic button to eject the tape.

I found the key and locked the console panel, and told him he had to use the menu on his terminal from now on.

no more mysterious crashes after that.

CompSci teacher sets lab task: Accidentally breaking the university

it happens with student machines too

had a similar issue happen in a Tech College (TAFE) here in australia a while back.

One of the classes (not one I taught - this time) was to install a windows server VM and a windows client VM and have the client pickup the dhcp address (and other dhcp settings) from the server.

except (of course) one student reconfigured their VM network and went into 'bridged' mode.

of course, after a while - after the class was finished and the students had left - the local IT support guy comes in not happy about a rogue dhcp server from "that room". of course, we couldn't log on as the student, and many had just locked the machine and left their session (and VMs) running.

so, mad panic "what do we do???"

I just started walking around, press and hold the power button until each machine had shut down - "there, fixed". and then suggested the teacher have a good hard talk with the class about rogue dhcp servers. did anyone lose work? maybe. don't care. needs must.

Tax working from home, says Deutsche Bank, because the economy needs that lunch money you’re not spending

so...

I should be taxed because I take my lunch (and morning / afternoon tea snacks) to work, and thus spend nothing at the 'local coffee-shops'?

Hey, just had a thought. The unemployed are also not buying stuff at those local shops either - we should tax those bastards as well!

Will there be no end to govt attempts to break encryption? Hand over your data or the kiddies get it, threaten Five Eyes spies

the crims are not stupid, nor do they lack money

The implied assumption of the 5idiots, uh, 5eyes, is that the 'crims' will only ever use 'commercial' encryption tools, and as soon as the 5idiots prevail upon the tech companies to compromise their encryption, it will be all sunshine and daisies.

what is to stop well heeled crims from getting their own tools with encryption that doesn't have the shiny new backdoor in it? "oh, no, it's illegal for us to not have a backdoor in our encryption technology, we better stop our other naughty activities."

All this posturing and pouting like children when they are told "no" ignores the fact that the crims are not fools, they are well heeled, and many of them are very very smart and can write software.

Sure, it's not a "good idea" to write your own encryption algorithm, but there are plenty of examples of code out there that are quite robust that could be incorporated (without backdoor)

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

a modern day...

...robin hood(lum)

Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard

"rank" - hah! :)

> he had no concerns about stinking up the IT department and also, more importantly, had rank.

his laptop was pretty rank too :)

Tech support becomes Australia's number one scam

Re: Marketing

Yup, done that dance with telstra, various government departments and banks.

Most eventually give me a name and an extension, and i call back sometime (much!) later on the published number and go through the ivr.

Oracle waves fist, claims even new Android devices infringe its Java copyrights

perhaps I'm an idiot...

(Or maybe not "perhaps" ;)

How does OpenJDK fit into this? From memory, Sun Micro open sourced the JDK, and thus would not the API's have to go along for the ride?

Copyright, for sure, but "open" as in able to be used by anyone.

NSW may fire 610 school tech support officers in March

snarky blow

> Teachers are, of course, paid for the school holiday period.

this is a low and snarky blow.

Yes, teachers at schools _are_ paid over the holiday period - as are most "full time employees" who take their 4-weeks annual leave entitlements. The difference is, however, that teachers are *required* to take their *full* 4 weeks annual leave over the Christmas / New Year period (i.e the "peak holiday time"), whether they wish to, or not.

And before you come back with "yeah, but teachers get lots of holidays through the year", this is known in the Award as "Agreed Non-Attendance" - teachers don't attend, and the department agrees not to pay them for that.

Apple land-grabs fuel cells for mobiles

prior art?

quick google revealed this http://www.gizmag.com/go/5325/ - which, while powered by metho, rather than 'hydrogen' is much 'the same' concept. Put fuel in, burn it (break hydrogen bonds and combine with oxygen), power lappie.

Similar stuff from Toshiba at CeBIT in 2007 here http://www.pcworld.com/article/157606/toshibas_fuel_cell_laptop.html including other consumer devices.

Local mag claims Aussie Eee PC buyers will pay extra for Linux

it's not as bad as you think, really

Hey,

as an Aussie, currently typing on an eeePC 701 (which I love), this pricing is not as bad as it seems.

Remember, the version of Linux being distributed is Xandros Linux - presently about $100US download version.

In general, we see the 'microsoft tax' is around $70US, the $30US difference is around the $40AU mark, so it's "close".

Let's face it, most of us that move to the 900 (and that includes me) will get the WinXP cheap and cheerfully, then repartition the disk and load something like eeeDora or Ubuntu and get the best of both worlds.

In many cases this is a "win-win" (pun intended :')

.h