Re: "Things" fall apart; the server can't be polled
Nice use of WB Yeats!
Posts by john 103
32 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Sep 2012
New UK product security law won't be undercut by rogue traders upping and vanishing, government boasts
China plans to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later
Calendars have gone backwards since the Bronze Age. It's time to evolve
Day 3 of the Apple vs Epic trial: What actually is an iPhone anyway?
Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss
Friday 30th April 2021 09:03 GMT
Re: "Well Analysis - New Knowledge"
When I worked in a Bank the Mainframe Logins were of the form Firstname + First Letter of Surname.
We had an English Contractor named Chris Tompkins who was very very knowledgeable.
If there was ever a question about the system we would happily reply "Christ knows"
Bless you: Yep, it's IBM's new name for tech services spinoff and totally not a hayfever medicine
Talk about a Blue Monday: OVH outlines recovery plan as French data centres smoulder
Habitable-zone exoplanet potentially spotted just around the corner in Alpha Centauri using latest telescope technique
A 1970s magic trick: Take a card, any card, out of the deck and watch the IBM System/370 plunge into a death spiral
Monday 7th December 2020 14:20 GMT
BASIC Loop on a VAX
Back in approx 1990 I was introduced to the University's VAX.
It had a BASIC (interpreter?) so using my Commodore 64 skills (& a colleagues terminal of course) I duly fired up the classic
10 Print "F*ck Off"
20 GOTO 10
I then started laughing as it filled the screen with expletives.
My poor unfortunate colleague had to ask the supervisor how to kill it.
The Supervisor tried CTRL-C, CTRL-Z etc but to no avail.
It turn out that the VAX would print to screen very slowly but would happily run lots of instructions so despite the program being killed it had a massive spool full of swear words ready to send to the screen.
Happy days.
Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms
Google screwed rivals to protect monopoly, says Uncle Sam in antitrust lawsuit: We go inside the Sherman parked on a Silicon Valley lawn
Police face-recog tech use in Welsh capital of Cardiff was unlawful – Court of Appeal
Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data
Friday 7th August 2020 11:07 GMT
other excel woes
Credit Card numbers transformed to scientific notation -BTW these were test card #s - We weren't storing real customer numbers in excel.
When loading to excel - excel looks at first 20 rows and "guesses" the datatype so you end up having to load a Dummy row with chars at the top to prevent excel deciding its an Integer column.
Schizophrenic Compatibility Checker Dialog box - did i save it or not?
Dates transformed into numbers based off 1900 -01-01 as 1 - Why?
Non-standard copy-paste rules - you get one shot and then excel helpfully clears your clipboard.
VBA is still the best way to program with Excel - In 2020 really?
C# Interop is "not recommended" for Server code - what's plan B?
Named Ranges - A clue as to the Range names would be nice.
Formulas - can't append more than 255 chars - however CONCAT() works - why
Still no easy way to cycle thru sheets via keyboard (hint CTRL-TAB would be nice)
Two large flightless birds walk into a bar... The pub's owner was not emused *ba-dum tsh*
Reply-All storm flares as email announcing privacy policy puts 500 addresses in the 'To' field, not 'BCC'
Oh deer! Scotland needs some tech smarts to help monitor its rampant herbivore populations
Monday 20th July 2020 14:46 GMT
Re: Thinking about this realistically ...
A few points
Hunters usually shoot Trophy Stags which has very little impact on the population carrying capacity as the population is governed by number of Hinds.
Not only do we want to reduce deer numbers but we also want to change deer behaviour. When man is the main predator - deer tend to hide in thick undergrowth. This increases tick numbers (and Lyme disease) and also has a far worse impact on Tree growth. When deer are naturally predated they avoid heavy cover and stay away from trees as they need to be able to see approaching predators.
Natural predation creates a much healthier prey population - the sickest and weakest are first to go - wolves in particular are superb at judging the health of an animal and always prey on the weakest. When the population pressures are lowered there is less malnutrition and disease.
Predators leave carcasses for other carrion eating animals - eg Golden Eagles and there are very few people would argue that there are enough eagles.
Large predators control the numbers of smaller predators (eg foxes)- this has a massive benefit for a host of other species - eg ground nesting birds and small mammals which in turn creates more ecological niches for other species.
Silly Google's Photos app labelled black people as gorillas
Blade Runner sequel might actually be good. Harrison Ford is in it
18 million iPHONE USERS HAVE NEVER BONKED to ApplePay
Hate phone games that make you buy in-app gumble? Congrats, you're a niche player
Clink! Terrorist jailed for refusing to tell police his encryption password
Friday 17th January 2014 15:47 GMT 
What about being able to prove you don't know the pwd?
Ie - Bruce Schneier's Trick* in The Cryptonomicon where the Key is the sequence of cards in a shuffled deck.
When the front Door gets busted down - Drop the cards & the pwd disappears.
You can then prove to the court that the pwd is non-recoverable.
Or is it possible to be Charged with Contempt retrospectively?
Any Terrorists out there willing to try this out?
*Bruce did say not to use cards as spooks/secret police are often known to read books on Crypto...
Tech titan Bill Gates: Polio-free India one of the 'most impressive accomplishments' ever
How UK air traffic control system was caught asleep on the job
World-leading IT expert? We'll fast-track you into Blighty, promises PM
Inside Steve Ballmer’s fondleslab rear-guard action
Friday 6th December 2013 14:57 GMT
Reg Users are not typical
Personally I think its a bit ironic as I blame Microsoft!
Cast your mind back 10 years when Mum/Wife/Girlfriend/Uncle Albert were all buying PCs
(Desktops - not even Laptops). When asked why the common answer was:
Email/Internet/Word Processing/Games/Print Christmas Cards etc
None of them were going to write code/ perform complex statistical analysis/ do CAD or any of the myriad of complex computing tasks that we take for granted.
To a large extent these people were suckered (Mainly by Microsoft/Intel) into buying massively over-specced PCs that never got above 5%cpu utilization.
I think there are a lot of valid use cases presented by the commentators here where tablets are clearly unsuited but the key point is that the majority of all PC users can manage quite happily on a tablet/phone and there's absolutely zero incentive for them to ever need to buy a new PC.
As someone above pointed out - this is a shame as these were the people who, to some extent, subsidized our PC innovation.
From now on - the notion that the PC is a "consumer" device is dead and we will revert back to the pre-internet days when only the techies/scientists etc need one.
As an analogy -In the old days you could use a C64 to write games for the C64 but now you need a PC to write games for the PS4. Same thing is happening in the world of PCs/Phones/Tablets.
Escape-Colon-Q
Apple erects measures to stop app-happy kids splurging parents' dosh
Monday 19th August 2013 09:48 GMT 
Bah
If Apple were serious - then they'd allow a system where free stuff could be added without needing the AppleID Pasword. As it is - parents & grandparents give the phone to the kids - kids learn pwd when they ask Grandpa to download temple run or something. Setting up & managing separate AppleIDs is a no go for most users.Instead there should be a 2-tier security system with a separate password for free stuff for kids. But it always comes back to the 30%...
Mystery object falls from sky, area sealed off by military: 'Weather balloon', say officials
Amazon-bashed HMV calls in administrators, seeks buyer
Tuesday 15th January 2013 16:22 GMT 
Problem with Online Ordering (Amazon)
Hi Folks, One problem I had recently with online - I ordered 2 books from Amazon - did the add to basket thing but then shut down the browser tab (Boss Key)
Anyway I went back in when the coast was clear and re-ordered the books. Wasn't really paying attention & when the lot arrived I found I had 2 copies of each book.
Of course as a Supposed Tech-Literate I should have been aware that the cookies persisted and checked my basket & all that but lets face it - you'd want to be a proper numpty to accidentally buy 2 copies of the same book in a bricks & mortar establishment. (I also believe that Amazon could and should have had a little more validation - "are you sure you want to order 2 copies of etc")
Had to send them back to Amazon & got charged for postage which p*ssed me off mightily.
A win for Waterstones etc as I won't be using Amazon again in a hurry.
Smooth criminals spared the clink for hacking Sony's Jacko archive
Agility without anxiety
Thursday 13th September 2012 15:06 GMT
Agile = Meh
OK - I'll Bite,
My overall experience of Agile has been extremely underwhelming.
The crazy bit is that it started as a pretty good idea (Kent Beck etc) but the 2 best features (IMO) Test Driven Development & Pair Programming are the one's that are never implemented.
"We haven't got the resources for PP"
"We haven't time to invest up front in a TDD Framework"
Instead you get the bits that Mgmt like because it gives a massive rod to beat the Devs with.
Typically you're given 5 mins at the sprint meeting to work out how long something will take - then when you finally figure out that you've underestimated - you get shafted. So the Devs cop on & start to game the Sprint - massively over-inflating the easy tasks so that they fill their capacity.
Agile is great for little noddy tasks that you'd give the college work experience guy.
"Add a widget to this screen", "Write a report to show X"
Fag-Packet Specs.
For any significant Software Delivery it falls over.
Also I hate the way "Agile" always puts up this 20yo strawman parody of Waterfall methodologies - like we're all still writing COBOL on green screens.
Ask yourself - would you use Agile to: Move data centres? Implement SOX? Port your Software to iOS or Faceback apps? Good luck with that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
