Posts by Old Used Programmer

Beta driver turned heads in the hospital

Re: Black screen

My home-brew alarm clock has both of those features. But that's because it's based on a Pi2Bv1.2.

Re: Landscape/portrait

I was once helping out as the support (is the software installed? is the network working? is everything plugged? if "yes" to all, go sit in the back of the room and wait for something to break) for the trainer to test the *training* instructions on a naive user. Because everything was working as it should, this left me to just sit and observe. The trainee was having a terrible time using the mouse. When there was a break, I went to the trainer and informed her that (a) the trainee had a death grip on the mouse and (b) the trainee appeared to trying to rotate the screen pointer by rotating the mouse. After the break, the trainer worked her way around behind the trainee and checked, then went to back to the usual spot and launched into a lecture on how the mouse worked and that you *couldn't* rotate the screen pointer. The trainer gave me very thorough thanks at the end of day for uncovering why the trainee was having so much trouble.

And here I remember when having a *flat* display was a top-of-the-line option (instead of one that bulged toward to user).

Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists

Re: Expose

Randall Garrett claimed to have been at the lunch with L. Ron Hubbard and John W. Campbell when the exchange took place.

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

Re: For readers outsie the US

US 1 (or parts of it, anyway) started life as the Boston Post Road.

The other requirement for Interstate highways is to have enough clearance under overpasses for a tank on a transporter to go through. As tanks have gotten bigger, older Interstates sometimes get overpasses re-built for more clearance. (The four in the town where I live got re-done by raising them about 18 inches within the last coupe of years.)

California man's business is frustrating telemarketing scammers with chatbots

The doctor probably needs to think about what he says when someone answer the phone. I get calls that are obvious recordings that start with, "this is a call from your utility company." My utility company starts with "This is <name of company>." Therefore, the former start is clearly spam.

I refuse to give them any data they don't already have. I would have stopped at the "you have the wrong number."

I get calls for my late wife. I tell them that she is no longer at this number. If they persist, I tell them that I do not have a new number for her. If they then try to pitch *me* for whatever scam they're on about, I have no compunctions about how to deal with them.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Unique keys

Actual Social Security cards have text on them stating that they are not to used for ID purposes. I pointed that out to a bank official when he asked for mine as verification. He said that impersonators almost never thought to carry a matching SS card. Might be different now. The late 1960s was a more innocent age.

Re: Unique keys

He missed "All names, when rendered in the Latin alphabet have at least one vowel."

Re: Unique keys

Then, of course, there is Iceland, which is still using patronymics.

Re: Unique keys

My maternal grandfather had a hyphenated last name (Ravn-Jorgensen). He dropped the hyphen and following when he came to the US through Ellis Island and later changed his last name because no one could properly spell or pronounce it (Ravn to Rawn).

My son's fiancee used a stage name, but (like so many aspiring actresses) lacked funds, so my son legally changed his name to the surname of her stage name, and when they married, she changed her name for free.

Re: Unique keys

My wife hated her middle name, so when we married, she just dropped it and used her (prior) last name as a middle name/middle initial. My mother had a second middle name, but I never saw or heard of her using it.

Re: Unique keys

My uncle (my father's older brother) got the same name as my grandfather. As did my cousin, and--by now, so far as I know--a couple more generations.

Decision to hold women-in-cyber events in abortion-banning states sparks outcry

Needs to be a floow up...

I look forward to a report on how the conference(s) go. Do the organizers have plans in place if they lose their (financial) shirts?

FYI...the cost of function space in hotels depends, in large part, on how many room-nights get booked and picked up. If you can't get people to show up and pay for hotel rooms, the areas in which you hold the convention get to be *very* expensive.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Or any official RPF PSU from the Pi2B (5V, 2A) onwards. Pi3B was 5V, 2.5A.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

There are others....

Don't forget the data entry supervisor and the IBM System Engineer for your installation.

Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records

Re: "life expectancy in [the USA]"

With Alzheimer's you're likely to forget you've got the gun and what you got it for. If you come down with ALS, you'll remember, but you won't be mobile enough to go get it or strong enough to hold up to use it.

How Arm aims to squeeze device makers for cash rather than pocket pennies for cores

Re: Licencing Per-Device

Sort of...you can buy Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual Cortex-M0 microcontroller modules. They go for $1 each. A full RP Pico is $4 to $6 per board.

This whole pricing scheme might be pretty favorable to Pis. The retail list price for the most expensive current model is $75 (Pi4B-8GB) with the Pi-400 running a close second at $70.

Unknown actors deploy malware to steal data in occupied regions of Ukraine

What's old in new again?

Hackers as 21st century privateers? If you have a Letter of Marque from your government, you needn't fear your government's policing authorities...

John Deere urged to surrender source code under GPL

Not the only one....

Once they get through getting Deere to comply with the GPL, they can go after Medtronic.

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Re: We have a few names - for people

As regards SMS... There is the problem that (at least in the US), the military is extremely rank conscious even with civilians that don't have a rank. My father worked as a field service engineer (aka "tech rep") first with the USAF, who classed the tech reps as sort of generic commissioned officers, and later with the Navy, who class tech reps as generic NCOs. When he died, he was a civilian employee of the Navy. It was while doing the subsequent paperwork that his boss, a Navy lieutenant, found out that a bit over 20 years earlier, my father had left the US Maritime Service as a Lieutenant Commander. Thus, the "dumb civilian" that he actually liked a lot, outranked him. Ooops...

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

Paint with *that* broad a brush...

The inclusion of "transport" in the list of kinds of web sites that would be banned would include the US Postal Service. Good luck with blocking that.

Biden: I want standard EV chargers made in America by 2024 – get on it

Somehow...

Somehow, I don't think USB-C is going to win this one.

Uncle Sam backs right-to-repair battle against Big Ag's John Deere

Re: It’s about increased profits, of course

They make a substantial amount of their profit on parts and repair services.

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

Re: Smoking computers

My solution was to build a plywood shelf that fastened to the front bezel and had about 4" standoff legs at the back. The cat in question loved it. It was warm for the cat, but the vents weren't blocked, so no thermal issues with the monitor.

Meta, which pays for web scraping, sues to stop web scraping

Re: Ergo

Be a lot better to claim 29 Feb 1900. If their date routines choke on it, just claim to have been born in a country that was still on the Julian calendar. There are several to choose from.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: The amount of times...

1 tonne ~ 1 long ton, the two being, respectively, 2204 lbs and 2200 lbs. The "common" US ton (i.e. what you mean if all you say is "ton") is 2000 lbs. None of them to be confused with the displacement ton, which is 35 cubic feet.

Stranded ISS astronauts are getting a new Soyuz to ride home

Suit or seat?

One would think that, on the ground, it would be easier to swap in a seat to fit a different sort of spacesuit than to make duplicate suits for everyone who goes to the ISS.

TSMC ramps up 3nm chip baking at Taiwan plants

Re: Oh come on

The top of the line Raspberry Pi, the Pi4 series is using 28nm node for the SoC. They're still selling earlier versions that use a 40nm node for the SoC. One kind of wonders what the specs of a 3nm node Pi would look like...

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Re: Appropriate use?

The tunnel through Yerba Buena island is big--two levels 5 lanes wide--but it's not very long (it's a small island).

Parental control apps prove easy to beat by kids and crims

Smarter that who?

I've long held that parental control programs are an intelligence test for kids. In light of this research, a test with an unsurprisingly low bar.

Bill Gates' nuclear power plant stalled by Russian fuel holdup

Re: 40 metric tons

And if you want to draw if out farther...Jesus Haploid Christ.

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

As an EECS student at UC Berkeley, I oncce got a tour of Lawrence Berkeley Lab. When we got to the 188" cyclotron, they shut the beam down, slid a shielding block aside, and we were invited into the actual cyclotron "room". We were also sternly told to leave things like watches on the tray outside, even if said watches were supposedly anti-magnetic. Inside the room, there was a constant magnetic field of 37.5 Kgauss.

Our guide took one of the old style AAA pen light flashlights out of his pocket and stood it on end on his hand. He then pushed at it with the other hand. It didn't fall over.

Boss broke servers with a careless bit of keyboarding, leaving techies to sort it out late on a Sunday

Re: Big red "cause a massive problem" button

Back in the day, San Diego State College had an IBM 1620 Mod. I that was run by student operators. The IBM CE gave the ops a simple rule to follow: If there is smoke coming out, use the normal power switch (it ran a cooldown sequence). If there were flames coming out, pull the Emergency Power switch, since the system was probably going to be a pile of scrap at that point anyway.

US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes

Solution....

Why does the idea of a drone equipped with a can of spray paint suddenly become appealing...?

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: An incident like this..

When I had my first DSL line put in, I specifically asked (and got) the phone company to run new wire from the pole. My reasoning was that it was an old house with the existing wiring in place for many years.

As for Tier 2...

I did an 18 month stint as Tier 2 DSL support at AT&T. If someone was a frequent caller (5 or moer per month, IIRC), they'd automatically get routed to Tier 2. One way to do that was, call and hang up before getting a live body on the phone repeatedly. IIRC, after three hangups like that, the next time went directly to Tier 2. Or, of course, you could start by asking Tier 1 to transfer you to Tier 2. That had a moderate chance of working.

Mind you my time doing this was a decade ago and even then they were cutting back on what Tier 2 was actually allowed to do to really help with. They were cutting out permission to do things like walking people through configuring a modem/router or actually debugging connections between PC and modem.

What was always a joy was when you got a customer on the line who obviously knew what he was doing...used the right language, knew what the various bits were, had a spare CAT-5 cable. Then one could cheerfully get down in the weeds with him, find the problem and fix it...or--if needed--open a ticket to send a tech or have someone make the fix in the CO.

Re: You get what you order

In 2000 I had an angiogram done. This involved (among other things), being under a mild sedative. One of the documents they wanted me to sing before being discharged started out with a statement that I shouldn't sign anything if I'd been sedated. I pointed that out and declined to sign that document. They did admit that my decision was sound and seemed to be kind of embarrassed about it...

Re: You get what you order

Fortunately, Medicare covered nearly all of bill for the 2.5 weeks my wife was in the hospital just before she died. I have to conclude that her "medigap" insurance covered the rest as no bill has shown up since she died 4.5 months ago. (The rough numbers are $121K and $1600.)

Re: You get what you order

The real downside for a business that causes you to go elsewhere is that you'll tell your friends about your experience and they will then avoid that company. They may even tell their other friends.

So far as I know, there are statistics on how many people tell others of positive experiences with companies vs. how many are told of negative experiences. Negative experiences spread farther than positive, IIRC.

LG debuts thin malleable screens made from contact lens material

Two things...

First, one could put on various surfaces of a car to tell the idiot who tailgating you what you think of him, or the guy blasting out rap at 150dB to turn it down.

What I'd really like to see would be a monitor that rolls up like an old fashioned home movie screen. Say in the 22" to 27" FHD range.

Singapore to phase out checks for businesses by 2025

When...?

When was the last time I wrote a check? Today.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Bad design

Saddle blanket first. Well...after finding a horse.

Re: If I have to look in the manual (absolute last resort of course) it's a really bad design!

My solution to that alarm clock problem is to use a Raspberry Pi with an RPF 7" display. All the "controls" are set up in crontab. Since ssh is enabled, I can "control" it from the PC I'm normally using.

DisplayPort standards bods school USB standards bods with latest revision

About HDMI to DP....

I'll agree with the point that HDMI to DP adapters aren't cheap. I have a couple of them and there were on the order of $30 each. They're also hard to find, mostly because when you try to look them up you get vast numbers of DP to HDMI adapters and very few HDMI to DP. What I'd love to see would be decent ones made that work both ways. Like wise for conversion between VGA and HDMI.

And, yes, my HDMI to DP adapters are for Pis connected to original PackedPixel monitors that only have DP. However since PackedPixel went over to HDMI (at least as an option) and then proceeded to go out of business, they're not a long term plan. Fortunately, there are now more and more companies putting portable monitors on the market that use HDMI input. Basically laptop displays packaged with a power supply and a cover, and for a lot less money.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

Just what we need....

A license plate you *rent*? No thanks.

Linus Torvalds's faulty memory (RAM, not wetware) slows kernel development

Sometimes...it's required

I built a dual Opteron system in 2002. Those processors *required* the use of ECC memory. The ECC DRAMs cost about 1/4 of the total build.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

Re: Ugh small cables are small...

Modern ones, I agree. Older stuff... I used to make my own RS232 cables. DB-25 (or even DE-9) connectors aren't hard to solder.

MIT boffins cram ML training into microcontroller memory

256KB, you say?

That suggests that it would run on a Raspberry Pico, or other RP2040 board.

Rather than take the L, Amazon sues state that dared criticize warehouse safety

Re: Key question

I will believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one.