Posts by Old Used Programmer

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

Re: More Weasel-Words

Pretty good chance this will be a major topic of discussion at this years SmofCon.

Liz Warren, Trump admin agree on something: Army should have right to repair

Re: Politicians lack of grip with reality

In the early 1970s my father was a civilian employee of the US Navy, working on ground support equipment. At one point, a knob was lost from one unit. He said he could have gone across San Diego Bay (he was working at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado) and purchased a replacement for about $0.25, or if he went to an inexpensive source, probably $0.10 to $0.15. He could also have walked over (about 100 yards) to the supply depot and pointed to the shelf where the spares were. But that's not how the Navy did things, so he put in a supply requisition for a replacement knob.

Six months later... A box showed up on his desk. The box had been sent from Bremerton, WA. In the box was an invoice for one knob for $10.52. The knob was in the box...and 51 more exactly like it.

He used to comment that his one hope for the US was that Soviet Naval Supply system was worse than ours...

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Please do not all power on at once

At one point in the mid-1930s my father was the staff electrician in NY residence hotel. One person there wouldn't pay his electric bill, so they'd pull the fuses. He replaced them with pennies. All my father would say about his solution was that the next time the guy pulled that he'd "get a handful of fire." After that...he paid his electric bill on time.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: What do you mean he is quiet?

I spent a couple of summers in the US Federal Summer Employment program working in the data center of the 11th Naval District in San Diego. This required a security clearance--Confidential, which is as low as it gets. I sometime wonder what the reaction of those doing the clearance was when they came across my father. He had a job for several years with a clearance high enough to crawl around inside nuclear armed Air Force B-52s on the flight line, and he had sockets welded to the bumper of his personal car to hold the flight line flags he kept in the trunk. (Yes...as a civilian, he was allowed to drive his *personal* car on the flight line of a SAC base.)

PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished

Buile it yourself...

My "alarm clock" (sorry...no sleep tracker, but I suppose it could be added) consists of a Raspberry Pi 2v1, an RPL 7" screen and a set of speakers. It's been running for 10 years and still gets software updates.

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

Re: Fake interest in product

I get assorted spam calls for my late wife. I tell them that she is no longer at this number. NONE of them have ever asked for a new number to contact her. I'd be tempted to find--and provide--a number for the Vatican (as she was Catholic). One time I mentioned the problem someone suggested that I supply the number for Dial-a-Prayer.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: Ones Aurora

I refer to that as the "CE effect".

Re: Not magnetic field, more star field?

Hmmm.... An ancestor of mine was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1757. He happened to be in the UK when the US revolutionary war broke it. He was "detained", escaped, got to New England, signed on board a privateer (pirate...to the other side), went out on a cruise, when the ship returned to port, he signed off the privateer.

Then he made his way home to SC. Three days later, he a had a commission as a Lieutenant in the SC Navy (I'm guess that he used the proceeds of the privateer cruise to buy it), was assigned to a very small warship (16-gun Brig'o'war). The ship captured a British stores ship. My ancestor was appointed to command the prize crew and was able to get the prize back to a friendly port. When the warship returned to port, the captain retired and suggested that command be given to my ancestor...which was done. This was all before he was 20. He was in command for the following 3 years, during which they were involved in the capture, recapture or sinking of 63 vessels. What was that about the competence of Young Gentle(wo)men?

Re: Not really a fix, but magnetic fields were involved

The Lawrence Berkeley Lab (the one up the hill from the UC campus that does unclassified work, not the one in Livermore that works for DoD) had to tell PG&E (local utility provider) when they wer going to start or stop the Bevatron particle accelerator. Rather large inductive load. They also had to notify the Field Free Lab, about half a mile away.

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

I would have thought that a MASER would work better and do it by frying any electronics present in/on the drone.

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: Memories having a secretary

In a mainframe shop, add CEs and console operators to that list of people to be on the good side of.

Re: Memories

My wife tested at 100wpm on a Selectric. We figured she was self-limiting because a Selectric will fail its rollover limit at about 110wpm and she would occasionally get the symptom of that: hyphens. Later, when what she had a work was a Mac, she called Apple support to ask if there were keyboard shortcuts for *everything*. The rather puzzled support person said there weren't and why would she want them. Couldn't she just use the mouse? She somewhat testily pointed out at, if she took her hand off the keyboard to use the mouse, it slowed down her typing. (She also used to type up manuscripts on a unix--BSD 2.9--system inserting nroff -ms commands on the fly at full speed.)

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Re: The mouse doesn't work in the afternoon..

I have mixed feelings about Pournelle... I was once asked to be on a panel discussion at an SF con with him. It was during one of his...better lubricated...periods and he was at least two sheets to the wind. Any time he couldn't make his point rationally or logically, he tried making it louder. I got a lot of sympathy from the audience...

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

Re: Hmm

Okay.... How do the workers, supplies, and construction materials get to an airport that isolated?

Re: Sure, what could go wrong?

You hope.

UC Berkeley had--by contract--two independently routed lines to an East Coast site as part of the internet backbone. A farmer in New Jersey with a backhoe took out a single fiber cable and both lines went down. What ensued was a lot of pointing at contracts and bills and a sizable payment made over the lack of *actual* independent routing.

Re: Nothing is ever new

Other way around. They lop off the low order digit. So a runway bearing 270 degree (that is, due west) is 27 and has a reciprocal of 9.

Re: Nothing is ever new

Numbering is in tens of degrees, counted clockwise from north. e.g. Due north is 0. Due east is 90. With parallel runways, you have Right and Left. And, just to make things interesting, if you come from the opposite direction, the number will be offset by 18 (180 degrees). So runway 9 becomes runway 27.

SpaceX has an explanation for the Falcon 9 bits that hit Poland

Re: Werner von Musk

Thank you, Tom Lehrer.

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

Re: Here are the copies

IBM 2311 drives used the 1311 disk pack...6 platters. 10 tracks per cylinder. Total capacity per pack, about 7.25MB. 2314 drives (11 platters, 20 tracks per cylinder, 29MB per pack) were a big improvement.

Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support

Not just phones...

Back in the day when the company issued pagers to those on call--and some who weren't. I was asked to keep my pager on while on vacation. I agreed to do so, but didn't mention that I'd be camping in a remote valley in the Sierra Nevada that was certain not to have pager coverage...and, sure enough, didn't. I did leave the pager on, since I was asked to.

I always made in plain that, if I were driving, I wouldn't respond to pages until I got to some convenient stopping place, such as my destination. I still hold to that principle with cell phones.

At one job, during the annual review, I was asked about my loyalty to the company. I replied that I was just as loyal to the company as the company was loyal to me. My boss really didn't like that answer, and--sure enough--during the next "reduction in force", I was one of the ones that was reduced, thus answering both questions.

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

Re: Canada tariffs....

The Canadians appear to be tailoring their counter-tariffs to go after goods from red states....of which California is not one.

Trump’s tariffs, cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts

Re: That's the point

What are you baiting your breath with, and what do you think that bait will catch?

Tariff uncertainty looms large over budget conscious CIOs

Re: In some ways it doesn't matter.

Same here. Planning to always refer to "That Felon in the White House" for the next four years. I rather doubt that very many people who read The Register voted for him.

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

Re: At that price...

Things the Pi5 brings over the Pi4B... Built in RTC with a battery option. Fan header separate from the GPIO block. The ability to put real mass storage (NVMe SSD) within the footprint of a standard case, rather than a fat, very stiff, external cable and storage device. There is even at least one M.2 adapter that lets you use the official case and put the lid on for a very tidy package.

Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

I will take exception to your claim that "happily married" is an oxymoron. It's why 2.5 years after her death, I still deeply miss my late wife.

After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus

Re: Cat warmer

While I had cats that would sleep in the tray of the laser printer, as soon as the printer started making noise getting ready to print, the cat would leave.

I had a cat that liked to lie down on top of my (large Viewsonic) monitor...so I built a shelf with the front resting on the bezel and back on legs about 5 inches long. Thus...warm space for the cat *and* ventilation for the monitor.

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Re: There are no bones in ice cream. . .

An 029 only if you want to have what you keyed in printed at the top of the card. Otherwise, an 026 will do just fine.

Old mainframer? Me?

Re: Apple II

Classic match-merge program. Standard in every programming course I've ever been through. The real trick is to figger out how to do it with three---or more--files. I once had the write a program to match-merge nine files.

Re: Cobol...

When I went to UC Berkeley as an Engineering major, the very first required course, regardless of what type of Engineer, was Engineering 1...FORTRAN and Algol, in 9 weeks. (Cal was on a quarter system then.)

Re: Cobol...

I refer to that as the "two heads are thicker than one" method of debugging.

My progress went the other way...I was able to pick up BASIC because I already knew FORTRAN (II and IV, as it happens).

Re: The Power of Fear!

I have referred to that as the "CE effect" for some decades.

Re: The Power of Fear!

Just a comment triggered by your handle...

My wife wrote an SF novel which involved a VR system. At one point, one of the people who wrote the system comments that one of the design decisions was a "big endian vs. little endian" issue. When the galleys came back from the publisher, that had been changed to "big Indian vs. little Indian". My wife changed it back, adding a marginal note of "See J. Swift". When she mentioned it to me, I pointed out that "big endian vs. little endian" is, in fact, a hardware architecture debate. My wife was not a techie.

(So as not to leave everyone hanging... The work is "A Point of Honor" by Dorothy J. Heydt. It is out of print, but can be downloaded from her web site.)

NATO tests aquatic drones to protect cables, coastlines

Re: DS999 - Definitely not a tool for sabotage

The captain of the ship in question is a Russian.

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

In one job, during the annual review, my boss asked about my loyalty to the company. I said that I was every bit as loyal to the company as the company was loyal to me. He didn't like that answer. A couple of years later, I was let go in a major "reduction in force". Didn't get around to pointing out to him that I was *still* as loyal to the company as it was to me.

Re: Someone else's number

No where near that serious, but I get a lot of calls on my land line this time of year wanting me to change medical insurance plans (I'm retired). One of my responses is "Why would I do business with a company whose first action is to violate US Federal law?" My line is on the Do Not Call list, so the calls are actually illegal. Got one today, where after a slight pause, the person on the other end said she'd put my number on their do not call list. Since the open enrollment period ends tomorrow, the calls should taper off the the normal sorts of scams for a some months.

Re: Warren's big mistake

My father was on a contract providing technical support to the US Air Force. We moved to an area when there was a big buildup going on. My mother contacted to phone company to get line installed (this being the mid-1950s all there were was landlines). They told her "3 months." This was duly relay to my father when he got home. The next day, the phone company came to tell her the line would be installed in 3 *days*. Apparently on hearing about the 3 month delay, the base commander had a conversation with someone at the phone company. Said conversation apparently includuing things like "essential personnel" and "right NOW".

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: Sometimes...

The thing to do was to get to know the IBM tech who did the actual support for your facility. Then utter the magic words, "Do you have a spare card saw?" They reasoned that, if you knew the correct name of the tool, you also probably knew how using it without causing even more damage. So, they'd give you one. If you *didn't* know the correct name, you'd never be given one.

Re: Sometimes...

When I worked for a "regional Bell operating company" aka "RBOC", the union insisted that anything that could communicate fell under their jurisdiction, right down to moving a PC from one spot to another. It was also widely believed that all telco techs that were incompetent were shuffled into the "official communications services", the internal folks that dealt with anything not used by actual customers. Fortunately, I met and got on good terms with the shop steward for the building where I worked. As far as he was concerned, anything I did was okay, so long as I never had to put in an official request for OCS to do anything if there were problems.

Andrew Tate's site ransacked, subscriber data stolen

Re: Buried in the lede

Your math is off... 100,000 at $50 per month, each, is $5 *million* per month.

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

Re: Why?

The old version of that is... A *real* programmer can write a FORTRAN program in any language.

California cops cuff suspect in deadly drone-assisted drug deal

Farther than you think...

The dosage (per pill) of one of the medications I'm on is 0.4mg. So...0.0004 grams.

Apple macOS 15 Sequoia is officially UNIX. If anyone cares...

Looking in odd places...

After reading the article, I just HAD to check... RPiOS 12 (Bookworm) 64 bit on a Pi5 does NOT include pax, by default. But it's available for install from the repositories (apt-cache search finds it).

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Re: I've not really used Windows much for 15+ years

I had somewhat the other way around. My late wife didn't like any of the versions of Word after Word for Windows 2.0. So when she finally got a machine it wouldn't run on she was willing to convert to OpenOffice. Some other things she used pretty much precluded going to Linux, at least not without more hassle than I was willing to tackle. However, her--by then--old unix skills worked just fine for dealing with a Pi/Linux based "alarm clock".

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Queue up Isaac Asimov, "A Feeling of Power".

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

There is a sequence I learned in 1964 that I doubt that I'll ever forget... <Instant Stop><Reset><Insert>4900796<Release/Start>. It's to get an IBM 1620 running Monitor IID going again after a program crash.

Raspberry Pi 5 slims down for cut-price 2 GB RAM version

Re: Reading between the lines

What as done with the 3B+ was to flip the chip over and add a heat spreader.

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

Re: Hard truths

Are you sure the series isn't B...C...P...L?

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

Re: Those Facility Guys!

In an IBM mainframe shop, get to know the CE and, if possible, the SE.