* Posts by Evil Auditor

2756 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jan 2009

Sri Lanka goes bananas after monkey unplugs nation

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"a loud explosion and saw a ball of fire."

That would have been the ex-monkey.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

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Re: 100V

Most people failed to correctly and reliably program a VHS recorder even without a speeding clock.

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

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Backup to /dev/null

I've surely posted this here before...

Early 2000s I asked a client, a small bank, whether they performed restore tests. Same answer: no, we get the daily "backup successful" message. At least, I managed to convince them that restore tests are a rather necessary task. And a couple of weeks later I get a phone call from that client after they found that all of their backup tapes were empty.

While setting up and testing the backup procedure, someone didn't want to wait for an hours-long backup to finish and directed the data stream to /dev/null. And then never changed it to write to the tape.

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Facepalm

But, but... "veeam guarantees the restore!"

FBI's secret UFO hunters fear Trump's January 6 purge will send them into orbit

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Re: Crazies?

...imagine Trump not only pardons his son to protect him from a potentially democrat-biased prosecution but also pardons a bunch of lawfully convicted violent criminals. Oh, wait

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Re: The most obvious "unidentified anomalous phenomena"

and does it have a permit to be outside?

FTFY. Mind you, there's a reason why labs that handle highly toxic substances are hermetically sealed.

Call of Duty studio co-founder pleads guilty to crashing drone into firefighting aircraft

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Re: Canada tariffs....

In theory they swore an oath to the Constitution, not to trump

And in practice? Seeing what kind of chamber of horrors Diaper Donnie has gathered, I doubt that they even know the constitution - beyond their interpretation of the First and Second Amendments.

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I'm sorry that you have to put up with another stinky stint of Diaper Donnie.

Asteroid as wide as 886 cans of spam may hit Earth in 2032

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...and Mick Jagger.

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Devil

@2024 YR4, I'd have some suggestions where to hit.

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

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"It's literally five, six months away."

We're not talking about Earth months, do we?!

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Re: "But I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time and you can drive it."

Someone should tell Musk!

Europe, UK weigh up how to respond to Trump's proposed tariffs. One WTF or two?

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Re: This sounds like wishful thinking

Certainly, the EUC wanted to demonstrate that leaving the EU is painful. In another example, when the Swiss decided they wanted to limit immigration and change the treaty on free movement, the EUC retributed with restrictions on Switzerland long before any change to a treaty was even discussed.

Anyhow, responsible for the disastrous Brexit outcome is first and foremost the bunch of condensed incompetence, aka Government of the United Kingdom at that time.

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Re: Just ignore Trump and carry on.

Never was, it is a representative republic

Democracy and republic are not mutually exclusive (it depends, however, how dogmatically you want to define them). "Representative republic" though is a pleonasm and the USA is probably best described as a representative democracy.

Does El Reg allow to call someone an idiot? Can we, please, establish an Idiots' Corner? Asking for a friend...

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

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That's why it was inadvisable to write directly to hardware in DOS

My first reaction was: that is inadvisable for any software! Then I remembered what I grew up with - optimising assembler routines for performance or memory - long time before we could throw shitloads of processing power at any problem.

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Probably my biggest surprise was when I moved the Win10 system drive from a deceased Intel PC to an AMD workstation - except for some SSDs, the power supply and the case with all new hardware. Just for the laughs I switched on the new computer. And Windows booted without any hiccup.

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Re: Do you see that I have a rag about my person?

I successfully trained my environment not to ask me for any PC or mobile phone issues. "I understand IT. And I do not know anything about your pesky desktop computer, modem, phone etc."

(Only exception to that might be if missus has an issue.)

BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit

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Asset registers are to be kept safe... Reminds me of an incident many, many moons ago. One day, a friend asked me whether I had use for used office equipment, originating from Big Corp, my employer at the time, sold online for very cheap. Sure!

Not long after I materialised said bargain, I had a meeting with Big Corp's security officer about some security audit. And during a tea break he tells me news, totally unrelated to the audit, about a now-ex employee, who privately sold lots of used office equipment, owned by Big Corp, and pocketed the revenue.

Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?

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1 thumb down? I guess, one of the lusers still has an issue with its attitude.

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They do indeed have a QA environment which is virtually a copy of their production. Problem is end-to-end testing, which involves third parties such as the PRN provider, outcome verification, and payment services providers. Then it's for the developers and operators to literally put their money where their mouth is.

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A test account acting like a person has little to no chance of surviving the purge.

Good for you - and your sysadmin. We have a case of an online gambling provider that operates in a jurisdiction where test accounts are not allowed in the production environment. The funny consequence is that the staff has to use their personal accounts and bet their own funds if they want to test a process end-to-end.

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

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Re: The Idiocracy takes flight

Hey, these were highly sophisticated stealth drones, that no one could see! That's why expensive and no evidence.

They've only gone and made Doom run in a PDF file

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Re: Just because you can.....

Agree. But, does it run Crysis?!

Life lesson: Don't delete millions of accounts on the same day you go to the dentist

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Joke

Re: "It was just another sentence"

I couldn't agree more. But... the warnings come after the spell!

Japan's wooden satellite exits International Space Station

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Elmo?! Please, only refer to the red, furry and never ever to the pale, egomanic monster as Elmo.

Otherwise: thumbs up!

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Brilliant! Now, there's only one problem still to solve: the 32' orbit is abuzz with orbiting birds and collision might easily lead to Kessler syndrome.

Proposed solution: mount cats on the satellite to scare-alter the birds' orbits, avoiding collision.

No, I can't help – you called the wrong helpdesk, in the wrong place, for the wrong platform

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It's a really good story. But did this take place in a time before silent mode, airplane mode, or off switches existed?

Sure, once in a rare while I leave the phone on during night because I expect a -private- phone call.

Swiss cheesed off as postal service used to spread malware

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Re: And that's why...

Hey, at least my mobile phone is typically less filthy than the average printed menu. And yes, I deeply dislike having to use my telephone to read the menu. In fact, on several occasions I pretended not to have a bloody phone and had the staff read the menu to me - I'm a very slow listener. They did deserve and get a good tip, it's not their fault after all.

AI poetry 'out-humans' humans as readers prefer bots to bards

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Coat

And so that indicates that Finnegans Wake was actually written by a human being after all?!

Mine's the one with Joyce for Dummies in its pocket

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

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Re: Multi-Fail

"The OTHER left!"

Same when I drive and missus navigates - I don't compute left nor right.

Gang of monkeys escape South Carolina biomedical research facility

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Nearly I couldn't resist on commenting something along the line of they just wanted to get out to great the orange monkey which's soon going to be their president, again.

Anyhow, they may have never been used for any testing. But now that they've been roaming freely in an uncontrolled environment, it's unlikely that they ever will be. Purposeless death awaiting them. Not that it makes much difference to the monkeys.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

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Facepalm

Re: 8.5 seconds...

More than once I shamefully failed Scroll Lock myself.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

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So it did work as a fuse, even if probably not rated.

Wanted. Top infosec pros willing to defend Britain on shabby salaries

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Re: Low salaries for security reasons?

You've just revealed the cunning counterintelligence plan.

AWS Cloud Development Kit flaw exposed accounts to full takeover

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FAIL

I'm torn between an outraged "how fscked up can they get?" and a not surprised "told you something like this will happen."

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

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Not only that but you also expect to be continuously mistreated by Mediocre Software manufacturers with unwanted updates over which you have little control.

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More of a story for Who, Me? isn't it?

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

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Ahh, Lotus' multi-dimensional spreadsheet... The first spreadsheet program I've ever really used. And to my great disappointment, soon it was replaced with Excel spread shit. The resentment's long gone for I've considered Excel the most useful product in the MS Office suite.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

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Re: Patches

which has been designed to fit both males and females from the first to 99th percentile

It's not elbow patches. It's a modernised version of the self-adjusting garment Marty McFly was sporting.

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Indeed. And also its insurance premiums go through the roof. Or rather high into the big, black sky?

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

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Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

I have probably never ever written bear with me in my entire life. This is, until this very moment.

Compression? What's that? And why is the network congested and the PCs frozen?

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First, I wanted to ask Vivian whether thereafter he moved on to our coloured pencil department. But since he's aware of the mishap he caused, that can't be him.

Tesla's big reveal: Steering-wheel-free Robotaxi will charge wirelessly

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Re: Does 'wireless charging'...

This. And that its passengers will be drained of energy to charge the vehicle.

Thinking of it, I'll drop that in the "news" channel of my batshit crazyconspirationalised acquaintances and see how it evolves...

Microsoft veteran ditches Team Tabs, blaming storage trauma of yesteryear

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Re: What I don't understand

...and bring the guy who messed it up to the stake. After tar and feather treatment. And breaking them on the wheel.

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Joke

Re: 4k 32" monitor $400

It's not a secret: once you've acquired a certain badge, you're granted a quota of mild swearwords.

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Joke

And he said "thou shall use spaces"

Ryanair faces GDPR turbulence over customer ID checks

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Re: I never fly Ryanair

Often, it's not the length of your legs but the lard in your arse that reduces leg space inconveniently.

Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

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Hey, they still do a great job as ambient light and heater. And are difficult to steal.

Windows 11 user hurt by the KB5043145 update? Microsoft offers a way out

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Trollface

Microsoft offers a way out

Replacing Windows 11 with Linux?