Target acquired
I suspect that DOGE employees will be targeted by hackers trying to get the government data they downloaded.
214 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2009
"We quickly learned he had been passed to us because he wasn't very good,"
I left a job after my contract wasn't renewed and the programmer who replaced me was incompetent. It turned out his former manager just wanted to get rid of him. I quickly got a new contract just down the hill. About once a week for a few months afterwards, my old manager would call and ask me to fix things. During my lunch hour, I would run up, make the changes then run back down. The sysadmin kept having fits as I wasn't supposed to be in the building let alone on their computer system but there was nothing he could do.
Someone asked how to add "Copy to folder" and "Move to folder" to the context menu of Windows 10's File Explorer. Microsoft advised them to reinstall the operating system.
I knew it was two simple registry changes with Windows 7 so I made a VM of Windows 10, did the changes and it worked.
I reported my findings and got an email from Microsoft congratulating me on having solved my problem.
1986 was the year PC clones became readily available which hastened the demise of the 8 bit.
In my case, I bought a Commodore Vic-20 in 1982 and wrote a BBS for it in 1984. It had multiple rooms (message areas), private mail and an online game. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or private. One of my users gave me my first job as a programmer, saying "Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic can program!" Thirty years later, he wanted me to work with him at Google.
Backup tapes on a DAT (remember those?) were getting corrupted so the unit was sent to Sony to fix it. No problem found. They were still getting corrupted so the unit, cable and controller card went to Sony. They still couldn't find out what was wrong.
They asked me to have a look at it and I spotted the problem right away. They had laid the cable across the back of a 21" CRT monitor. Cable moved, problem solved.
And Australia's entire EFTPOS network by correcting a spelling error.
Someone fixed the code they were assigned, noticed a message in adjacent code was incorrectly spelled, corrected it and down went the network. The length of that message had been hard coded in the program and correcting it changed its length.
> mindless automatons following a script without any regard for the actual outcome
That happens in private industry too. A company making an automated analyser decided the project would be done with C++. Unfortunately, the programmers they hired knew only Visual C++, not embedded programming or anything about hardware. The project was finally completed years late after spending a lot of money on replacing burned out stepper motors.
I had a team of three technicians trying to fix my broadband and failing. The fault was found days later by a fourth who discovered after quite some time that another company's technician had disconnected me at the junction box while repairing my neighbour's connection.
I rely on the Internet for medical reasons so I have my usual connection plus a 3G modem and the hotspot on my phone. All three use different ISPs in case the fault is with the ISP's network. If the power goes off, my laptop batteries will last a total of 21 hours and I can charge them in my car with a 12 VDC to 240 VAC inverter.
When my Windows drive died four days ago, I had to decide which operating system to install out of Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux. Windows 10 has a bad reputation with Microsoft's "Ready or not, here I come" installation of buggy updates, changing user preferences and hiding settings, all of which make Windows 7 appear more reliable to me. Linux was not a practical option as I have so much Windows software so I reinstalled Windows 7.
> Windows 11 introduced a novelty in the Windows world: a black screen of death.
That was actually introduced by Windows 7.
I fixed the neighbours' computer - again - and told them not to move it. Of course they moved it and got a black screen. I found out that Windows, running on that particular hardware, was sensitive about which USB port you used for the mouse.
I'm confused about the CPU requirements as it ran fine in a VirtualBox VM using one core of a 2nd generation Pentium.
The UI is something I can get used to without grumbling too much. My main concerns are (1) will I have another battle to prevent its trying to install itself on my mum's antique laptop and (2) will Microsoft drop its "ready or not, here I come" approach to installing buggy updates.