Posts by J.G.Harston

Let's... drawer a veil over why this laser printer would decide to stop working randomly

Re: Well, you say that but ...

Most likely they dug down to bedrock and built the building on that, then backfilled the celler with soil to get a level surface. That's how my 1890 terrace is built, with stone flags on the levelled soil.

Yesterday: lady in flat next door ranting that "the boiler's broken, call an engineer!". Look at boiler. Move switch from 'hot water' to 'heating + hot water'.

BBC makes switch to AWS, serverless for new website architecture, observers grumble about the HTML

I run RTR's Ceefax Simulator and it's getting harder and harder to parse the BBC's data stream there's so much crud in it. Kudos to Richard for continuing to weed it.

I know people with screen readers who are similar trouble. THEE DIV PRESIDENT OF DIV THE UNITED DIV DIV STATES DIV....

Re: Does this change explain

Or even just let the person reading the content use the fonts that the person reading the content is using.

Super-antique-fragile-and-it's-XP-alidocious, even though the sight of it is something quite atrocious

Re: Maplin catalogue

And the Maplin catalogue cover art.

H₂? Oh! New water-splitting technique pushes progress of green hydrogen

Re: > blasting microwave radiation at a watery chemical soup

I have a battery in my car to initiate the petrol combustion. Why don't I just drive on the battery instead?

Re: Storing hydrogen is an absolute pain

Won't we have holographic doctors to do the pipe cleaning by then?

You can't spell 'electronics' without 'elect': The time for online democracy has come

Re: You. Are. An. Idiot.

Now scale that up to enough boxes to change the final result.

*And* get the total number of ballots in the box to match the number issued.

*And* get the serial numbers on the ballots to match those that were issued.

Re: Security

Errors in banking transactions can be reversed with little impact. There is a one-to-one match between the end points. Any interference in the transaction can be noticed and rectified, and only impacts that one transaction. It is difficult to scale it up to effect loads of transactions, you can get at Fred's account, but getting at Fred's account doesn't get you into the thousands of other accounts at Fred's bank.

Re: Local opinion

BZZZTT!!! Party names on UK ballot papers came in in the 1970s. You can't blame Blair for the 1969 Representation of the People Act.

"The insane Electoral College system then of course needs scrapping"

What you mean is: that insane system of being a federal country made of individual components needs to be scrapped.

The US president is the president of the federation. The states are the members of the federation. The states elect the president of the federation. To change that you need to change the US to be a single unitary state, which overturns the entire foundamental foundation ethos of the entire country.

Re: Electoral System

Where on earth do you live? You mentioned the UK, surely you've noticed elections happen *EVERY* *YEAR* in most of the UK, at least every two years everywhere.

Re: Advantages of hand-marked, paper ballots

https://youtu.be/EV_c1-YTk8M?t=36

"Then the neighbour tries to vote and is rejected. What happens then? Does the neighbour go home and forget it?"

In the UK system, the elector is given a "pink ballot" which they use to vote, and it is stored seperately. At the count, if there are any pink ballots that would effect the vote, the ballots are sorted to find the matched serial number of the personated ballot (a *HUGE* task at even a council election), and it is replaced with the pink ballot.

The thing with Modex isn't the security issue. It's that you don't need anybody's permission to use a ten pound note, you need the card issuer's permission to use a card.

"Last time, as it usually does, the Republican party lost the popular vote and won the presidency"

That's a feature not a bug, because - as you mentioned - the US is a federation not a unitary state. The president of the federation is the, well, president of the federation, and is elected by the members of that federation - the states - specifically *not* by the people. Just as the chief executive of the UK is chosen by the people elected to Parliament, not by the people electing the people elected to Parliament.

"Follow Estonia's lead"

So, change the US into a small, almost entirely urban country.

Remember when the keyboard was the computer? You can now relive those heady days with the Raspberry Pi 400

I'm starting from scratch - using a better keyboard and putting an off-the-shelf Pi inside it. No need to buy somebody else's attempt and chuck half of it away.

Akh! That's a horrible keyboard. Can you get the kit and insert a keyboard of your own choice? A nice decent one with actual keys, not tiddlywinks.

I've got a very nice Dell SK3200 which I've been sawing a hole in to fit a Pi. Even the flatter KB813 is better than the advertised offering.

You only live twice: Once to start the installation, and the other time to finish it off

My airport experiences as so much more prosaic.

I visited Japan a couple of years ago. I'd had surgery a few months before and was still taking post-op drugs. On arriving at Haneda Airport the boarding card had that ominous little tickbox: Are you carrying any drugs.

So, I approach the immigration clerk and they sat me in the room with no windows while they sent for somebody who could work out what my best-remembered university Japanese attempts were at 'blood pressure', 'pain relief', and, ahem.. 'stool softener'.

Re: Sadly, no international jet-settng for me

RyanAir refused to let me board a Common Travel Area flight to Ireland without a passport. So I took the ferry instead, they waved me through with my 30-year-old Hong Kong ID card.

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Re: Poor On-Call this week

Ah, you mean Jennel. ;) Now, what's the difference between a yard and a ghaut?

Re: Token ring

It's there on the previous page, complete with taping over unused sockets.

Re: Hot & cold

The kitchen cold tap was always required to be fed directly from the mains, specifically so that it wasn't fed from a storage tank.

Re: Poor On-Call this week

HinH: I've just discovered exactly a similar issue.

A bit ago my kitchen fluorescent light stopped coming on. It would occasionally flash, but fail to start. Changed the starter, changed the tube, still doesn't work. Ok, need to change the fitting.

Yesterday, got the step ladder out. Decided it would be a good idea to test the wiring before the full fiddly of taking the fitting out, so disconnected the wires and put into a chockblock with a lamp connected. Turn on wall switch. Lamp flashes and goes out. Odd.... Wires lead and plug to existing fitting and plug into wall socket. Light fitting works perfectly. Odd...

Remove wall switch. One of the wires sprongs out. Ah ha!

The important information is that the test lamp is a fluorescent bulb. With the loose connection the switch was able to arc over for the high current to kick start the lamp, but the low current to keep it running wouldn't arc over. Which also explains the tube's symptoms.

So, today's job is to turn the power to the lights off while it's daylight and replace the wall switch.

Re: Long drive to switch on a Wyse 50 terminal for a very, very important solicitor

Still happens with PCs. I solved that particular problem in one office by gaffa'ing two telephone directories together and plonking the PC on them, raising it up the crucial one inch. (Yep, even then they didn't make phone books like they used to do, had to use two of 'em.)

Re: Closest I ever got to this...

# Hello, IT

* My laptop can't get onto the internet, it's plugged into a network socket.

# Ok, can I have your machine ID.

* blah blah blah etc

# Hmmm. That's not in the network database. Can I have your user logon ID or your payroll number so I can check your user details.

* Oh, I don't work here.

Yep. Random stranger wandered into office, expected to be able to plug into corporate network and use it.

Re: Thud, dead!

I've had similar to that. Computer not working, blah blah, site visit. I pop the lid of the computer, check all the innards, power up, works fine, "play" for ten minutes, still working fine, put everything together, still working, pass back to user.

User calls back, still an issue. Back and forth. Eventually I spend the afternoon there, and at some point the user adjusted the monitor - which was stood on the computer case. A couple of minutes later the computer failed.

It turned out a hardware expansion inside was juuuust tall enough to almost touch the top of the case. Of course, whenever I went there I moved the monitor and opened the case. When the user was using it he subconciously fiddled with the monitor and eventually the weight would be in just the right place to hit the top of the expansion and knock it just enough out of its sockets to make it fall over.

Researchers made an OpenAI GPT-3 medical chatbot as an experiment. It told a mock patient to kill themselves

A good point, but with almost all my ailments I know what they are, and just need to see any GP to get gatekeeper'd on to a specialist. Last time I went with my polyps the GP was a newly qualified chap who'd never seen real live ones before and I had to explain to him what they were and how they behaved in the wild.

One "advantage" of Covid-19 is that my post-op followup reviews with my consultant are on indefinite hold, so with any future flare-ups I don't have to go back to first base and get past the GP again.

Re: Oh great. I can see it now.

Is that a billiards cue they're threatening to ram up it?

Flash haters, rejoice! Microsoft releases tool to let you nuke Adobe's security horror before support ends

Re: The curse of flash

I've noticed that happening more and more, my suspicion is that it's a way to force people to stay on a website, on first loading the page it redirects to itself multiple times, so filling the 'Back' list with the same page. I end up menuing on Back and finding the real previous page from the list.

Brit accused of spying on 772 people via webcam CCTV software tells court he'd end his life if extradited to US

Remember, the UK also has some of these extraterritorial laws. If a UK citizen resident and domiciled in the UK goes to Thailand and diddles with kiddies, they can be prosecuted in the UK for breaking UK laws.

Report: UK colleges face testing times with ageing kit, iffy connectivity, and some IT staff supporting 1k+ users

Re: It is all about the student

It's the old "The key to the box to change the lock is locked inside the box" thing.

Can't log on 'cos there's no domain, to change domain need to log on as Admin, can't log on as Admin 'cos there's no domain and there's no non-domain Admin.

And then you get IT Support fighting with the Computing (teaching) Department. In my uni in the '80s, the Computing Department *were* the IT Support.

The problem is that it is often funded as capital instead of as revenue.

Ok, we've paid for a new roof, a classroom of typewriters and a fume extractor. Come back in 30 years when it's worn out and we'll spend to replace them.

Ok, we've paid for 100 new PCs, come back in 30 years when they're worn out and we'll spend to replace them.

All computer kit needs to be acknowledged that they are consumables, yes, even the damn computers themselves, and be paid for from revenue, just as though they were toilet paper.

Yes, I hate hate hate the thought of electronic kit being skipped just 'cos it's last year's stuff, but that is today's reality. In 1981/2 schools were given a chunk of money to kit out with BBC computers on the "that's ten years' capital infrastructure, come back in 1992" model, and people are still doing it.

What will you do with your Raspberry Pi 4 this week? RISC it for a biscuit perhaps?

Doing some tidying up a couple of weeks ago I found a "new" sealed in-box unused BT Broadband router from 2010. Completely useless, yet it felt so wrong to drop it in the bin.

Did Arthur C. Clarke call it right? Water spotted in Moon's sunlit Clavius crater by NASA telescope

Re: Nuclear waste dump.

But the dark side keeps moving, the side facing us half the month and the side facing away the other half. You'd have to store your waste in Moon Trucks and keep racing them to keep in the dark.

Uber drivers take ride biz to European court over 'Kafkaesque' algorithmic firings by Mastermind code

Re: Uber

Uber aren't a minicab company, they are a private hire company. Minicabs (in the UK) are illegal.

Re: Uber

Uber isn't a tech company. They're a private hire radio control centre.

Linus Torvalds hails 'historic' Linux 5.10 for ditching defunct addressing artefact

So in bytes that's 46 bytes for the year and 18 bytes for the subyear. And we are currently in year 0x0000...000680000000-ish. Bytes 5-45 of the year will be zero for the foreseeable future, 40 times the current age of the universe. Hey, why not save 40 bytes of storage! :)

State of Iowa told no, you can’t use $21m coronavirus federal aid to help fund your $52m Workday roll-out

"Difficulty in recruiting and retaining personnel with historic [COBOL] code experience was cited as a problem in maintaining the system."

Ooo Ooo! Me sir, me sir! (waves hand in air) I can do it from home, sir!

Got an irritating itch you just can't scratch? That'll be Windows wanting an update

Re: Whataboutism of the Day™

決不! 北方入侵者語言!

Aiah! I notice Google have removed Cantonese from the online translator. They claim it's a dialect of Mandarine. Rubbish! That's like saying Polish is a dialect of German.

FYI: NASA appears to have scooped dirt from an asteroid 200 million miles away and plans to bring it back home

What size bus? A double decker bus? A city nipper bus? We need to know!

Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

Re: El Reg becoming political now ?

And only 16.3 million people voted to Remain - or about 23% of the population.

Re: El Reg becoming political now ?

Is this the Electoral Commission that wrote the very question?

GSM gateways: Parliament obviously cocked up, so let minister issue 'ignore the law' decree, UK.gov barrister urges court

Re: Keeping watching the birdies everyone

But that won't prevent people from continuing to use the higher standards.

Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party

Re: And another blast from the past

My first post-Uni (well, last month of Uni) job was installing AsEasyAs on a suite of PCs.

2020 hasn't been all bad – a new Raspberry Pi Compute Module is here

Seeing it plugged into the I/O board - gods, it's tiny!

But the Pi really is this century's equivalent of a CPU IC back in the '70s. It's the difference between buying a wallwart and having to build a PSU from scratch for every project like when I worra lad.

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

The "problem" is that users *like* having an integrated service. Imagine going back to the 19th century telephone system where you had to be a subscriber of the same telephone company as the person you wanted to contact, resulting in many people having to have multiple telephones.

Re: Not going to happen

OS make maps. Google Maps aren't maps, they're..... dunno, diagrams, but certainly not maps.

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

XKCD as always....