Posts by PerspexAvenger

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: Irony…

"Reacher" did it.

Say what you like, it was still better than the films.

...not that that is much of a bar.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: Don’t know about you

A while back I was put through a CAT-scan to make sure my brain was there, or something, and as I was lying in the doughnut I was staring up at a little red light and a few mm away some text that, from my orientation, was printed upside-down.

Given I was there for a few minutes, I lay there and sounded out D-O- -N-O-T- -L-O-O-K- -I-N-T-O- -L-A-S-E-R- -A-P-E-R-T... oh.

Bit of a design flaw, if you ask me.

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

Re: Not is such a tiny word

Also the "now" vs "not" thinko/typo....

Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email

"We are very disappointed that Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future. When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins."

...didn't VISA ban any other CC provider from the Olympics due to an exclusivity deal?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

Re: Don't ask "is it plugged in"

In a (far) previous life, we used "unplug it, blow in it to make sure there's no dust in the connections, turn it 180deg, and plug it back in" to a pleasing PC diagnosis success-rate.

Nobody ever complained that none of those connectors -actually- go in upside-down over the year I was on the phones, mind.

The show Musk go on: Elon asks Uncle Sam to let him fly his Starship over Texas, scores fat NASA contract

Re: ...hopes to take Starship to the Moon and beyond with people on-board

Well part of the Dragon test payload was a wheel of cheese, so they're on-message there...

Whirlybird-driving infosec boss fined after ranty Blackpool Airport air traffic control antics

Re: Contrary view

He's in a helicopter. He can sit and fucking wait.

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

The 4th stage is "how did that ever work?"

Operation Desert Sh!tstorm: Routine test shoots down military's top-secret internets

Re: rows of car batteries baking in the 48° heat

Or do what I do and have a leisure battery and an inverter (Resmed, handily, makes a proper 12V supply for my machine).

Cost less than £100 all up and lasts me at least a week.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

Re: I too have had that

Similarly, mine was "/fileshare /dirtodelete".

Huh. This is taking quite a whFUCKFUCKFUCK^C^C^C

*Confess to boss, schlep off to find backup tapes and enumerate just how far down the alphabet we got*

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

Re: We have surely reached peak beard.

I use my beard to hide my collection of chins.

Silent Merc, holy e-car... What is that terrible sound?

Easy - the "Jetsons" flying-car sound.

Future! \o/

Banking in 2019: Sure, we'd recommend TSB's online, mobe banking say cowed customers

Re: Flawed survey ?

Obligatory Yes Prime Minister: https://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA

Granddaddy of the DIY repair generation John Haynes has loosened his last nut

Re: Not always helpful

Hey, that's advance warning that you're in "here be dragons" territory. I'd call that pretty helpful...

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

Re: Cost?

If you're talking industrial drones they can get very expensive very quickly, but if you're of a technical bent you could spend a couple of hundred quid and put together something that can fly hands-off if needed. For quads you could easily build a few and send them up at an optimum time-spacing for maximum annoyance - I was also considering the feasability of a tiny petrol-engined fixedwing, which with an autopilot and enough fuel could get you enough loiter time to -really- ruin someone's day.

Drug cops stopped techie's upgrade to question him for hours. About everything

Re: Sheffield had a water-fountain/sculpture thing...

Birmingham's central one, which I'm sure has an Artistic name but swiftly got termed "The Floozy In The Jacuzzi" had, apparently, an enormous problem with water leaks that they were unable to fix.

They subsequently filled the thing full of soil and plants, and left it.

...it took about 15 seconds for it to be rechristened "The Ladygarden". :D

SpaceX finally Falcon flings NASA's TESS into orbit

Re: How about we....

In case you're interested, I believe the series mentioned is the one here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywp6dnJeufw&list=PLpEqMkxe7Xk_00sUp7g_wYkAIIuVbGvYz

The individual vid where it's (first, at least, I imagine) mentioned is:

https://youtu.be/P06X2TZUKZU

Teensy weensy space shuttle flies and lands

Re: The vehicle looks a lot like NASA's Space Shuttle

I don't believe they drop-test quite so neatly, unfortunately.

Mythbuster seeks cash for roller skates to wear in virtual reality

Re: Yeah... No....

That's... not the stupidest idea. BRB, off to set up a Kickstarter.

*looks up -really- strong rawlplugs*

Guess who's hiking their prices again? Come on, it's as easy as 123 Reg

Re: A question for you all

If you just want to keep track of your DNS, Dyn do a) and sort of b).

It's not git-like, but you do have a zone file change history in there.

HMS Queen Lizzie impugned by cheeky Scot's drone landing

Re: Weaponised drones...

I dunno about anyone else, but a quarter-of-a-million drones coming in in swarm would certainly put the shits up me...

The Perdix test swarm was only 103 drones, and the final "orbit" demonstration becomes even more disconcerting if you consider them either armed or programmable for kinetic strike...

https://youtu.be/OixSNQp0S_k

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

Re: Laboratory waterbath

Similarly, the great big transformer one of our previous offices sat above wasn't going anywhere, so to save our monitors (and probably genitalia) we went instead.

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Re: Then there's change control idiocy...

I dunno, I'd definitely want a backout plan if I were bouncing a box after 3 months of updates with, one assumes, no test environment to make sure it's not going to wind up fuddocked when (if) it comes back...

Fear the dentist? Strap on some nerd goggles

Mine has gone the "cheap distraction" approach.

He's got a "Where's Wally" poster stuck to the ceiling. Works quite well, personally.

Sysadmin's sole client was his wife – and she queried his bill

Re: Two Rules Apply

I had a Moment with a -particularly- unresponsive cheap-and-shitty keyboard shaped object that resulted in me yanking it and snapping the thing over my knee.

Satisfying beyond all compare, though I did have to do a bit of searching to round up most of the keycaps afterwards...

RAF pilot sent jet into 4,000ft plummet by playing with camera, court martial hears

Re: Flying While Blonde

It'd posit that the injuries probably happened when dive suddenly and violently became non-dive and the ceiling reinforced its ceiling status...

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

Re: Where's the "Any" key?

That's why, if you get the chance, you change it to "Press 'A' key to continue..."

The terminally confused can at least normally then find it. After a while.

The Naked Product Launch: 30 seconds to sell a robot

Re: To crowdfund a product is not quite like shipping or releasing a normal product

Don't forget "gratuitously late", which is the value-add I've had for most of the KS projects I've backed thus far...

ARM: Hold my beer, we'll install patches for your crappy IoT gear for you

"Product makers pay..."

And that right there is why this will not progress.

'Doubly unacceptable' Swiss vegan forces his way into the army

I'm confused.

Given military training assumes some (small) likelihood of having to take a life without the owners consent (either in survival craft, or shooting at the other guy) and I figure would be incompatible on that basis with a vegan lifestyle, why didn't they just process him as a conscientious objector and send him to the civil service?

I'm figuring civil service neither mandates the wearing of leather nor consumption of specific foodstuffs, right?

Mysterious algorithms, black-box AI recruiters are binning our résumés

Re: Good scanning system

An old boss used to do something similar - "Apply quoting reference <whatever>".

It was a random sequence of letters and numbers, irrelevant to everything else, but if they missed it? Sorry, poor attention to detail, you -are- the weakest link, goodbye...

Y'know that ridiculously expensive Oculus Rift? Yeah, it just got worse

I may be a Vive owner and fan...

...but adding in the cost of the PC to the Rift is a little disingenuous when you're pricing out the various options and comparing to a Rift with "The HTC Vive is $799."

Re: Everything they're doing would be fine

Thankfully the extra "they want -how- much for shipping?!?" factor killed that off for me for a while...

...and then Scan pointed out they were cheaper and faster.

It -is- very shiny, though.

User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert

Re: The computer Tao

We used to term that the tech bubble.

When a user had problems with stuff, us going over would bring the tech inside the bubble, at which point it would, of course, work. When we leave the tech is no long in the bubble and becomes sad and fails again, etc.

The extra wrinkle we found was that some users, including the PHBs of this world, have -negative- tech bubbles, and you need to keep them away from anything important and otherwise outmass them with positive bubble. This may require more than one individual to escort them through a server room...

Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

To be fair they do point out that ATC will be frantically trying to find someone groundside who knows what the 737 controls look like so they can specifically talk you through actual control operations.

This is the worst-worst-case scenario if they somehow can't find someone within comms distance who knows what the inside of a plane is like for some reason so... uh... best not to fly redeye. On New Year's day. On a Sunday. Or something.

Evil OpenSSH servers can steal your private login keys to other systems – patch now

What, no sexy brand-name and associated collection of T-shirts and mugs?

I am disappointed...

Uber app will soon maybe track you 24/7, cry privacy warriors

Are you -sure- that's right?

"the Uber app will use the smartphone's public IP address to get a rough idea of where they are geographically".

Sooo... behind a big proxy in a datacentre somewhere?

'Dammit! All these guys are in the Docklands! We need more drivers there!'

Think you’re hard? Check out the frozen Panasonic CF-54 Toughbook

Mmm.

Nothing says "confidence in one's product" like not allowing (or at least showing) demos of the protective features it's designed-for...

EFF, Lessig battling copyright takedowns

Maybe he's a copyright lawyer? :D

Colombian boffins reconstruct flight path of Russian meteor

Re: A modest proposal...

"Well, our object collison budget's a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg'n your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky. "

Mobes, web filth 'pornifying' our kids, warns top Labour MP

Why is she focusing on the tech side?

See "Why the Daily Mail is Evil", here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9dqNTTdYKY

(Stick with it, there is a -reason- for the intro)

Great scott, they can just walk through shops and see this stuff!

Won't someone think of the children?!?

*flail* *kneejerk* etc, etc...

Bendy screens are the future, screams maker of bendy screens

The multi-tablet thing seems like a marvellous solution in search of a problem.

What, IMO, they need to do is fix the form-factor; scrap the cables and just mount a tubular computing/power core at the bottom of the page and tadaa - roll-up Kindle.

I'd buy one.

'Amazon can't do what we do': Twitter-miner's BYO data centre heresy

Re: How much do they pay Twitter for the feed?

I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking that - it's a reasonable data-rate and I'm surprised they've not been ToSed out of access yet...

Disappearing filth leads to dropped charges in extreme smut case

In other news...

Please feel free to commit as many high-tech crimes in Northumbria as you like, as they don't appear to have a functioning computer forensics team there...

*eyeroll*

Child porn victims seek multimillion-dollar payouts

You know how I figured this was organised by the lawyers...?

"Any defendant who was forced to pay more than another is free to sue the other for compensation."

Bonanza!

NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

Great.

Now can we look at getting a national "non-emergency" number for Police services as well? Something I regard as A Bit More Useful.

If someone's nicked my car overnight there's no point me dialling 999, but it'd be nice to have a straightforward way of poking the local station.