Posts by DonM.

A last look at the Living Computers museum before collection heads to auction

paper can endure ....

Several decades ago I was a contractor at one of the Baby Bells (after the breakup of the original ATT) working on a project to digitize microfilm (analog) central office engineering drawings to an electronic imaging system - a bizarre combination of bit mapped raster files with vector drawing overlay files. We had just about finished the rollout & training to all the engineering offices. The last office I visited had a framed central office layout paper drawing over their service desk, dated '1902'. Still perfectly legible & intelligible. Shortly after that visit the company announced their buyout of another Baby Bell and that our imaging system would be replaced by the software the other Bell entity was using - totally different interface, totally different image formats. I packed up & departed. But still haunted by the 100 year old paper drawing ...

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Re: Been there, done that, where did I put the tee shirt?

Used to work with a developer who would put on a hardhat to signify 'do not disturb ' mode.

The wastepaper basket is on the other side of the office – that must be why they put all these slots in the computer

Re: The human mind is a frightening thing

In the US 60-70 years ago, some houses had these built-in 'medicine cabinets', essentially a recessed steel box with a few glass shelves and a mirror as a door. These boxes had a slot cut thru the back panel with a label "used razor blades". So your used blades just fell inside the wall cavity.

I never saw one of these walls opened up but I always imagined this huge pile of used, rusting, and lethal blades. Perhaps a similar mindset at work in this case .....

Adios California, Oracle the latest tech firm to leave California for the wide open (low tax) Lone Star State

Republic of Texas ?

This is the same Texas where a state legislator is going to introduce a bill calling for a vote on secession (leaving the United States).

I wonder how that might play into Larry's plans ??

Sun billionaire Khosla discovers life's a beach after US Supreme Court refuses to hear him out

short time at Sun

Do keep in mind that Khosla was only at Sun from 82 - 84, the very early days.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

Re: "Act normally! Ginni and the team are here to see what Austin is really like."

In ancient Hawaii, a commoners life was forfeit if his shadow intersected with the Kings shadow.

I wonder why I thought of that when reading this article .....

We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare

Re: "as designed"

My years of working with crap EMC products spawned a new acronym - WADDI

"Working As Designed - Designed Incorrectly"

'Treat infosec fails like plane crashes' – but hopefully with less death and twisted metal

Did this analogy originate with Bill Joy ??

I remember hearing a talk by Bill Joy (a founder of Sun) in the late 1980s where he suggested that the crash of an operating system should be as rare as the crash of an airplane. And investigated just as thoroughly.

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

Re: Fragile. Very fragile.

Back in the previous century our shop was running a VAX 11/780. We had a real DEC field service fellow come out for some minor fault - this guy reached in the main cabinet to remove one of the logic boards from a powered up and running system. We were able to intervene before he got the board out. Needless to say, this fellow was blacklisted and his manager reamed ....

Rimini Street: Dispute with Oracle is contract law, not copyright

tough job to abandon Oracle DB

I don't believe you could find a single entity running Oracle DB that is using the DB standalone. Folks are running specific applications that require Oracle DB as the backend. This is "safe" for the application vendor - how can you possibly go wrong with Oracle as your data store ?? But more and more of these app vendors are also listing MS-SQL as supported. And a large percentage of the small - medium size users are making that switch, or considering it. Your opportunity would not be to get customers to go open source, but to get app vendors to go open source. And there are few of those who have the huevos to abandon Oracle or MS.

HP's shareholder settlement deal over Autonomy merger DENIED – again

It was once said that the best predictor of the behavior of any large company is to imagine that the board and all senior executives had been replaced by the company's worst enemies. Imagine their actions and that is most likely what will come to pass ...

Terrifying photo special: 'Electric Cannon' anal orgasmo-probe in use ... on a BULL

the 'Rectum Rocket'

Several decades ago, I worked in the electronics shop of a well known Veterinary College. One of our more interesting jobs was the repair of this electro-ejaculator kit. Every 3-4 weeks one of these would show up in the shop with busted XLR jacks, broken cables, or failures in the control box. We made good use of the spray bottle of alcohol and paper towels.

Watching this device in action was always impressive - the vet. would manually pulse the voltage dial, the bull would start bellowing at the voltage spike, and then a big sigh when he let go. They always appointed a female vet student to hold the collection tube. This likely contributed to an extremely low instance of unplanned pregnancies within the student body ...

Sinofsky OFFSKI: Is Windows 9 now codenamed 'Defenestrate'?

emails will soon surface ...

And show that Sinofsky was also having an affair with Gen. Petraus.