Posts by John R. Macdonald 105 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2009
Or guns. When I worked for a defence contractor one of my colleagues told me about a security guard, on his evening round, who saw his reflection in the glass wall which separated our offices, this was in pre-open space days, and pulled out his sidearm and fired away. Drinking on the job was suspected.
Not entirely true for France. Apps are no longer allowed to indicate the precise location, only a 'zone' (can't remember the length of said zone) that straddles where the safety camera is positioned. French Waze users certainly report where the cops are. AFAIK nobody has been prosecuted for that.
Radar detectors OTOH are definitely illegal.
@elaar
A former manager of mine regaled us with a tale where he was flown out by helicopter, a long time ago, to an oil drilling ship somewhere in the North Sea to fix the 'faulty' software that, no longer, kept the ship in place with the help of a couple of gyroscopes. My manager's diagnostic was the software worked as designed but both gyroscopes had been turned off. The officer on duty, when the ship started spinning around the drill, swore on everything he held holy that he had only turned off one of the two gyroscopes not both. The computer log said otherwise so a now fired officer was flown back to land with my manager.
@Kobus Botes
Concerning your second anecdote here's a C&P of a similar post I wrote about 5 years ago.
Heard of a similar story concerning a mainframe (this was back in the 60-70's) that would crash fairly regularly during summer in the afternoon.
At first it was thought the cause was a defective aircon installation but checks and sensors said everything was okay.
Turned out that when the sun made its daily stroll across the sky, the computer room had this one particular window which would, in the afternoon, let the sun shine directly on the glass lid of the disk unit housing the system pack.
A long time ago I heard a story, unvouched, about Thomas Watson (I can't remember if it was Sr or Jr) being denied entry to an IBM facility because he wasn't wearing a badge. The enraged entourage wanted to fire the lowly security guard on the spot but Watson said 'No, he's only doing his job'.
@Peter2
Dont forget things like entering whateversitedotcom instead of whateversite.com or when asked to input numbers, to ask if they are upper case or lower case. Got called 'an old fool' once after 45-50 minutes of such shenanigans. Got called much worse when caller and his supervisor sussed out I had been stringing them along for an hour. I had time to waste that day but unfortunately my phone didn't or I would have made it last longer so I asked for his supervisor to compliment him, sardonically, about his underling being so patient with an old dodderer like me and let on I knew, from the start, they were scammers.
Days I'm not in the mood I ask for the IP address or MAC number of the computer they're calling me about. Once got 'Sir, I'm calling about your Windows computer, not a Mac'. Conversations generally get very short afterwards.
Worst case of jet lag I've seen in a person was a former GF. Her company, to thank me for helping them out on a thorny technical matter, had invited me to their week long annual shindig, in Senegal, which ended on a Saturday when we flew back to Paris. Sunday GF and I departed on our holiday, from Paris to Bangkok and by Tuesday we were in Hong Kong. GF was totally wasted and no longer knew where she was nor why. It took her days to recover.
@NetBlackOps
I had a somewhat similar learning experience with COBOL in the late 1960's on a 360/30 with 32K memory. My mentor, who was also an experienced assembler programmer, walked me through the compiler generated assembler listings explaining how and why various COBOL coding techniques affected the final size and speed of the program.
Had the same problem with glorified accounting machines that used tape cassettes as storage medium. A cassette written by machine A was not always readable by machine B even if both machines were in the same office. The read/write heads were not always calibrated identically on different machines.
Many many years ago I was backpacking in Afghanistan and when the intercity bus stopped at a rest stop for lunch I asked where the toilets were. The Afghan waiter looked at me quizzically then waved lazily at the desert. I walked in the indicated direction and looking down found out he was right.
I remember reading a story about a Westerner, a long time ago (60's?) in Moscow, being hauled in by the KGB who showed him pictures of himself cavorting with a young Russian lady. The guy sorted the pictures into two piles, pointed to one of them and asked the KGB men if he could get extra prints to show to his mates back home. The KGB then concluded he couldn't be blackmailed into working for them.
@DavCrav
There is no civilian police force in rural France. The Gendarmerie fill that role (but not all gendarmes have police powers). Actually it's a bit more complicated than that but I'll let you do your own research.
Concerning "We don't have a quasi-military organization enforcing civilian law in the UK. " Doesn't some of what the SAS does, or has done, come pretty close to that?.
Back in the 1990's. a former colleague told me that he went to an interview for a well paid IT gig in some unnamed place in the Middle East or darkest Africa (can't remember which). After all the technical and pecuniary questions had been answered, he was casually asked if he knew how to handle an AK-47 and if so, would he be amenable to being a squad leader for co-workers with similar skills, 'just in case'.
He declined the job.
@Rich 11
Pulled a similar trick on the kids of a friend of mine who were visiting. I was living in Paris at the time in a flat with a great view over the city, including of course the Eiffel Tower. At midnight I pointed to the illuminated Eiffel Tower, said 'Out!' in a loud voice and snapped my fingers. The lights on the Eiffel Tower obediently went out. Cue two very impressed young'uns.
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