Posts by earl grey

Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong could put region's future as an up-and-coming tech hub in jeopardy

"won't change Hong Kong or threaten its residents"

I think the proper reply is:

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.

Windows 10 Insider wondering where Notepad has gone? Fear not, Microsoft found it down the back of Dev Channel

i miss the olden days

before MS dropped a turd every time they turned around.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

it's not magical maths, just put in the backdoor

and bend over. we'll just get a warrant (ha ha ha) and we'll read anything we want (well, except YOU'RE not allowed to read OUR stuff).

waiting for the first time the 'backdoor' gets used on every congresscritter that votes for this.

Belief in 5G conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with small explosions of rage, paranoia and violence, researchers claim

5G caused infertility in men and cancer in humans

not true at all. However, it does shrink your brain to the size of a grain of sand so you do ever more stupid things.

The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist

i think super milkchan summed it up best

you dumbass!

Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft

ms is making the whole world insane

i actually upvoted bombastic bob. wtf ms?

ESET rushes to defend rival Malwarebytes in legal war sparked by vendor upset at 'unwanted program' labeling

i like ESET

long ago in a far away galaxy, i had a crappy computer with crappier software and downloaded a free ESET to try. Had a question for them and they actually emailed me back within 24 hours. try to get that from just about anyone else unless you are a big $$$ business.

Amazon declined to sell a book so Elon Musk called for it to be broken up

we still need the BOFH

someone to help his muskiness into the next world.

5G mast set aflame in leafy Liverpool district, half an hour's walk from Penny Lane

but, but ... it fried my brain

cell

Frontier: Yes, yes, we've filed for bankruptcy protection, but that's not stopping us giving key staff $38m in bonuses

what does this remind me of?

Yes, a wacko riding a bomb down from space....

not sure why.

US cable subscribers are still being 'ripped off' by creeping price increases – and this lot has had enough

Re: Sign up for your $1.32 payout

give customers the BIRD

Everyone knows about the BIRD!

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

Re: Why wasn't it in by design?

backside whipped on the server

i thought the only thing that got whipped was the Llama's ass.

Dude, where's my laser?

Re: ACME Corporation

And everyone knows that ACME only sells to Wiley Coyote and the darn things never work right.

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

I'm not a smoker, but

The idea of using a ciggy with the fuse was so that you had a longer escape time before the cigarette burn down and lit the fuse. Cigarettes used to be made so that they would burn completely down either to the end of the cigarette or up to the filter end they didn't go out like the new ones do are supposed to. I believe the change was mostly made to prevent fires with people dropping cigarettes down the back of couches etc. I have it on good word that it works perfectly and setting off a firecracker next door to a crappy neighbor having given the miscreant airport time to get indoors and not be seen.

Apple and Google tweak key bits of contact-tracing privacy plan

so what happens

If you have wifi and bluetooth turned off all the time... or does this turn them on and run your battery down no matter what?

phone not just turned off but powered off?

oh, you don't have a "modern" snoop phone... here's one - carry it everywhere. lolololol

Travel advice for the week ahead is just: STOP

my registry is probably the thing of nightmares

The registry was always f-ed up to begin. It should never have allowed applications of any kind access to a primary system level file.

Zuck loves free speech so much Facebook will censor 'anti-state' content in Vietnam after telcos 'crippled' access

Re: So that's how you make The Zuck comply

"polish its image"

I think you mean to polish its knob.

Yes, she knows all about that, too.

Cloudflare goes retro with COBOL delivery service. Older coders: Who's laughing now? Turns out we're still vital

JCL or ECL

Both can come back to bite you in the arse.

Re: Why COBOL?

"revered error elimination"

Furthermore, the one shop where i worked we were not allowed to have any compile errors - not even warnings. That made it even more fun.

Re: Retrieve the old textbooks

Upvote for the Gestetner. I used to have to run one of those many decades ago and it was a fine machine.

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

i measusre my safe distance in airbags

Yes, those delightful Bulgarian airbags. Keep myself surrounded at all times.

Real-time tragedy: Dumb deletion leaves librarian red-faced and fails to nix teenage kicks on the school network

Pah, you kids

Back in my day it was a slab of damp clay and a stick.

BOFH: Will the last one out switch off the printer?

thank you

have a few

Welcome to the telco, we've got fun and games: BT inks 5-year deal to outsource mainframe management to IBM

they are well and truly forked

having worked at a place years ago that forked the employees over to I've Been Mislead, stealing employees pensions, and then having IBM dump a whole lot of those folks prior to the contract ending.... and then watching the same thing happen years later (again - some folks are slow learners) and watching as big blue proceeded to dump more and more of the experienced (yes, older) workers and try to force many more into relocation (at your own expense)...

Ah, fuck 'em.

Sunday: Australia is shocked UK would consider tracking mobile data to beat pandemic. Monday: Australia to deploy drone intimidation squads

There are some right nut-bags out there.

That's Mr. Scrotum to you sir!

Captain Caveman rides to the rescue, solves a prickly PowerPoint problem with a magical solution

ugh, all sounding too familiar

Having been employed by and worked for over 40 years for a major telco which infamously pushed tele-work to the general public but NOT to its own employees...

all i can say is Bastwards.

when i did work from home, i used my own computer as i refused to take their lappie home with me because I would be liable if anything happened to it whilst off the company premises.

glad i am not there any more.

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

Re: Deja Vu!

I hate to say it, but that reminds me of the capacitors going bad on our old 1100 systems. Smelled of fish oil and we could tell the engineers before they totally failed. Stunk up the whole computer room.

Icon - smells of fish?

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

as someone once said

It's Hammer Time!

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

stupid tests

When i was that supervisor in the computer room (many moons ago), the company "changed the standards" by which they allowed potential candidates into various programming jobs and a friend and i were required to do a new test in a "pseudo assembler" language. We both passed, but it pissed us off enough that we made a sample test for the computer attendants to use and so many of them passed that the wanker brigade dropped the test entirely.

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

lovely AC

Many decades ago i was hired into an unmentionable large corporation to be a computer room supervisor. Our floor was all raised and there were tiles with holes to supply extra air for the needed mainframe components. I always liked having one of those tiles right under my desk.

BOFH: Gosh, IPv5? Why didn't I think of that? Say, how do you like the new windows in here? Take a look. Closer...

Thank you

Have one (or several).

Departing MI5 chief: Break chat app crypto for us, kthxbai

oh, so you're using encryption

You must be a terriorist.

Report to chokey immediately (if not sooner).

Can AI-enhanced virtual sports presenters do the job? It's a big ask

still have a pair of JBL 100s my brother gave me

But always wished i had the money for a set of NS1000s from Yamaha.

old dreams.

Ah, night shift in the 1970s. Ciggies, hipflasks, ADVENT... and fault-prone disk drives the size of washing machines

Ah, Fastrands

Place i worked had a whole herd of them connected to a bunch of Unisys 494s (run in 490 mode). Also had some 1782s and (IIRC) VIIIC uniservos (tape drives). Eventually replaced with 1100 series and the "disk packs" of the day. More fun.

Prior to that i worked a place that had IBM 360/55 with 8 disk drives. We used to keep a card hanging on the front of the control unit to tell us which pack was in which slot. That worked until one guy failed to notice that the card had dropped into the drive and it crashed. And he moved it. An moved other packs. Disaster. Manglement would not allow us to purchase packs from anyone but IBM and it took quite a while to get the drives repaired and new packs ordered. UGH.

Think we had an IBM 3525 there (again, IIRC) - combination card reader and punch.

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

PC

Pissed Cthulhu

to borrow a phrase

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. for this to end.”

BOFH: Darn Windows 7. It's totally why we need a £1k graphics card for a business computer

the ozone smell

seems to me i recall ozone being a byproduct of electrical discharge. well played, well played.

What a terrible result from this year's Super Bowl. Can you believe it? Awful. Yes, we're talking about the tech ads

did not watch

did not miss

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

make your own noise

I prefer bagpipes myself.

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

you should all appreciate this one

I was on the phone with an un-named company and they asked if i would do a survey at the end...and here's the good part.

They specifically asked that i NOT give them 10 as their system registered that as a zero and they got gigged for it.

Bad programming?

Bad managlement?

Wankers?

Don't know...service was ok so i gave them 9's.

Beer necessities: US chap registers bevvy as emotional support animal so he can booze on public transport

mmmmmm....beer

Mmmmmm,.....beer

Judge snubs IT outsourcers' plea to Alt-F4 tougher H-1B visa rules: Bosses told to fill out the extra paperwork

awwww, poor H1B companies

Tell that to the IT folks who used to work a Disney and other places and have been replaced with cheaper workers both offshore and imported in. It's not about the skills, it's about the money.

The Foot of Cupid emits final burst of flatulence in honour of fallen Python Terry Jones

i'm more sad

that so few have posted here. I hate to see this kind of loss to the world. Too many gone.

Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits

enough frivolities

did i miss the damn survey results?

BOFH: You brought nothing to the party but a six-pack of regret

Re: Posters with platitudes

And the arsehole says it's never empty; there's always something in it (you can't make a perfect vacuum).

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

Merry BOFH day to all

And to all a good night.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

Re: Clean underwear...

True enough. Sadly got those around you, various sphincter have a go once you're no longer in control.

Re: Passport barriers at Stansted

Ah, blinded by the light. I know that one.

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

we didn't have none of that

back in the cave days. you kids.

Take a Big Blue cheque and go: IBM settles 281 UK age discrim cases

there's a phrase for companies like them

lower than a snake's arsehole.

that about sums them up.

It woz The Reg wot won it! Big Blue iron relics make it back to Blighty

olden days

I worked a shop with 2 360/65s, a 360/30. a 7080. and eventually a 360/40 on which HASP was initially installed (my understanding being that this certain large corp had one of the first instances after Houston). I started to learn PL/1 on that as well as get a good grasp on JCL (well, as much as was possible), and later learned COBOL on a different site's 360/50 which was upgraded to a 370/155 (?). Memories; faded at best.