Posts by dak

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Re: Incorrect labelling

Or Fort William instead of Port William.

I know someone who did that.

GNOME 48 beta is another nail in X11's coffin

I used to be a UNIX admin and I had to configure X-windows running on SunOS.

I have been using Linux since Mandrake 5, many years ago.

Nowadays I run Linux MINT and I have not the slightest idea what the window manager is - it just works perfectly to my taste. I think it's Gnome, but it might not be. I suspect I'm fairly representative of most Linux users in that respect.

Only 4 percent of jobs rely heavily on AI, with peak use in mid-wage roles

Isn't everything?

Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts

No it wasn't. TSB's original de-merger system was a fork from Lloyd's. That was bad enough, but the outage was caused by a bungled switch to an entirely different system used by Sabadell.

How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds

"outshined"?

Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

Re: So, shoot the messenger is still well and alive

A £12 OBD reader off eBay will bring peace of mind.

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

Re: Real Sanitizers

For me: radio, books, LP, cassettes, 2 episodes of TV, never seen the film.

Don't listen to the Hexagonal Phase - it's rubbish.

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

Re: ... half a brain

Doesn't mean they didn't, though.

Twitter dismantles its Trust and Safety Council moments before meeting

Re: Snowflake journalism

Because it didn't use to be so bad, so reading it became a daily habit.

That is a habit that may not last the rest of this year. The past few months have seen a rapid decrease in useful, objective or genuinely witty reporting.

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

Adverts in an operating system?

Fortunately, adverts don't bother me.

And, if the developers/packagers of Linux Mint ever became as venal and hubristic as Microsoft, there are plenty of other Linux distros to choose from. I don't anticipate having to change.

'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead

I still have mine - a great machine!

Whatever you do, don't show initiative if you value your job

Re: Once bitten...

I brought down an entire bank by doing that once.

That time a techie accidentally improved an airline's productivity

Re: Everybody knows...

I see this a lot.

As a Test Manager it makes me angry about other Test Managers.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: This is the way... the Scotty way...

For testing, however, manglers always calculate back to what they thought the original development time should have been and then allow half of that.

UK government having hard time complying with its own IR35 tax rules

Re: Can anyone get it right?

There in no such thing as a PSC.

An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile

I sometimes include a joke in long technical documents and tell the prospective readers that it is there, somewhere. That tends to lead to more careful reading.

Sometimes I don't include the joke.

Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless

Re: Lost dog pictures

I had to do just that last week. It worked.

COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it

Back to the future

In a couple of weeks' time I will be starting back at the office I was in when Boris the Power-Crazed shut the country down. As it happens I was in their departure lounge anyway because they had blanket-banned all ex-IR35 contracts. I will be returning still ex-IR35 and on a considerably higher rate.

The point of this comment is that the office is 350 miles from my home and my work cycle will be what I was doing then - 8 days there, six days at home every fortnight. The site itself is a very attractive one, full of interesting and inspirational people, and I have always worked better when stimulated by good competition.

I simply don't see how any company can inculcate its corporate ethos into new hires when they are kept away from existing staff, and in time many companies will lose their corporate identities entirely.

Of course, for many of my former clients this will be a Good Thing.

Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day

The Angel of Competence

https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=angel%20of%20competence

HMRC tool for measuring IR35 status is so great, employers are ditching it in their droves

CEST? A lamentably shoddy piece of work.

I wrote a series of articles on just why CEST is a lamentably shoddy piece of work.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critique-hmrcs-foia-response-1-david-kirkwood-msc-miet?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_pulse_read%3BEFOl1yohSrWKtsjHZcs%2B6A%3D%3D

In the next couple of weeks I will be returning to a client I left because of their IR35 blanket assessment. I will still be outside IR35, and earning more than I had been. The client will be paying a new intermediary about 50% more than in 2020 just to get me back.

EasyJet flight loadsheet snafu caused by software 'code errors' says UK safety agency

Re: Weight of passengers

ATR-72 has a tail prop. We always had to wait until the cabin crew had nipped out and hung it on the back before we could stand up.

Missouri governor demands prosecution of reporter for 'decoding HTML source code' and reporting a data breach

Re: Dare I admit to the govenor ...

That is exactly why I am now involved in party politics.

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Re: When forgetting 2 simple characters (-r) means a long walk

Three characters, Shirley?

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: This will be the fourth...

And the irony is that by Windows 13 (3 versions after "the last Windows ever") it will probably be a Windows wrapper around a Linux kernel and GNU support structure.

Re: I defenestrated myself a while back

Why not break her in gently - the X1 runs Mint brilliantly.

This will be the fourth...

...generation of Windows that I will happily ignore, having switched all of our computers to Linux some years ago.

Life is soooo much simpler now.

Want to feel old? Aussie cyclist draws Nirvana baby in Strava on streets of Adelaide because Nevermind is 30

Re: 30 years ?

Whoooosh!!

Think you can solve the UK's electric vehicle charging point puzzle? The Ordnance Survey wants to hear about it

The answer to the charging problem...

...is diesel.

BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days

Damn!

I signed a new contract yesterday and completely forgot to insert clause 85e.

Re: Unlike the £1 coin...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQBPQak2Ef4

Go to L: A man of the cloth faces keyboard conundrum

It was my birthday

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

No SQA?

A conscientious Test Manager should have done a full SQA on the supplied software, showing it conformed to local requirements.

However, testing is expensive, isn't it, especially when you are dealing with throw-away items such as aeroplanes and passengers.

Re: Who was the developer?

So the software wasn't tested before use, then?

Tut, tut.

Why yes, I'll take that commendation for fixing the thing I broke

Re: Experience is the best teacher

I did it, brought down an entire bank.

(Not my code, and it had a happy ending.)

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

It's not a pound sign. Not anywhere that uses pounds, anyway.

Re: Proof reader

Trainspotting was set in Leith, Edinburgh

$900bn coronavirus stimulus bill includes $600 for most Americans, $50 in monthly internet subsidies, $1.9bn to help rid the US of Huawei kit

Re: Outraged of Suffolk

Is there not an apostrophe in King's?

Adiós Arecibo Observatory: America's largest radio telescope faces explosive end after over 50 years of service

Re: 60 years old? -- Time to build a new one

Absolutely. Bloody kids!!

Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good

Re: 50 years ago ...

Agreed, though I spoke to Plusnet a couple of hours ago to report a line fault and really struggled with the Geordie, despite living only about 60 miles from Newcastle.

Re: That reminds me..

I had two cheques for small amounts last week from British Gas.

I have no idea why.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

IANAL, but...

does this not constitute a "post-contractual obligation", and therefore unenforceable in the UK?

NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly

Re: How do you avoid US spy gear, it is everywhere.

Microsoft don't record ANYTHING that my computer runs or does.

Nor those of any of my family.

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Not Just Acces

Way back last century, the toolroom in the factory where I worked had a god-awful scheduling system and a very enthusiastic tooling engineer, who brought in a copy of Superbase and built his own system. It worked quite well for them and kept entirely under our radar.

We (DP) found out about it 55 weeks after it went live, and about 30 weeks after the engineer went on long-term sick. He had, of course, omitted a full date specification and the previous year's jobs were popping back up again. Could we please, fix it for them, please, please?

Of course, we couldn't, at least not quickly.

Part of the reason that it took a couple of weeks to alert us is that for a while the toolroom was legitimately quoting delivery dates into the factory in week numbers up to 66.

Amazon Lex can now speak British English... or simply 'English' if you're British

Scottish Elevator?

I don't recall ever being in an elevator here - I've used lifts often enough, though.

The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon

Re: Power!

Thank you for "fabricobble", I knew there had to be a word somewhere for that important activity.

We've heard some made-up stories but this is ridiculous: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Bing erect huge skyscraper out of bad data

Storey not story

See title

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

My old car is pure Lotus (apart from the Ford, Triumph, Riley, etc. parts).

Refurbishment continues, it should be my daily driver again later this year :)

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

Re: Apple

Thank you. The only thing I could think of was a cap gun, but you have explained it perfectly.

Re: Apple

Could someone please explain why "putting a cap" in something may be thought undesirable? I am completely baffled.

I got 99 problems, and all of them are your fault

Re: Rudest, Dumbest - same thing no?

P&T in Luxembourg once sent me an email to tell me my phone line had been cut off. Which it had - a fortnight before they deactivated the email service.