Posts by Mark 85

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

Re: It goes far beyond that ...

Who would YOU pick as the patron saint for a holiday best known for hedonism, libertinism, decadence and debauchery?

Paris. Bring back her icon.

Anonymous Coward

I'm a limey and proud of it! And I do know the origin of the expression

I'm a left ponder and I know the origin of it also.

Data loss prevention emergency tactic: keep your finger on the power button for the foreseeable future

Re: Another sign of the migration of El Reg Westwards?

The main selling point for El Reg is that they've declined less than everyone else.

True but the downward path was set when the vulture was diminished and the motto "biting the hand that feed IT" is long gone.. I go to the front page now and it's a jumbled mess with promotions masking as articles, etc. Speaking of changes, the forums have seemed to have disappeared. <sigh>

Re: The "half click" and related moves

I would dispute

the late 1990s, when computers were made of metal

however; many "proper" computers of the day (that is, even if you ignore the likes of the ST and Amiga) had plastic or glass-fibre cases.

There's a reason the big boxes in the data centers were called "big iron" back then.

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

Re: The human race could be safe after all

Pressing the big shiny red nuclear button might be too big a hurdle for the current crop of world leaders to jump.

The actual button press is manual labor and that's what they have lackies for....

New measurement alert: Liz Truss inspires new Register standard

Re: Delighted ...

Britain has a surfeit of gas"

Would that be the intestinal type or the kind from down deep in the earth? Inquiring minds and all that....

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

know how luducrously expensive this sort of stuff *can* be if you don't bother shopping around and allow yourself to be ripped off by suppliers who see people in need of such stuff as an open wallet,

I would suspect that there's a big hidden charge in the price.... lawyers. Much like ladders these days. Any excuse to sue someone will bring a large number of them to your door offering to "help"... for a large fee of couse.

Re: But I DO want to know!

I was only working there as a casual employee, so maximum 4 hours a few days a week. But it still almost drove me insane. How the full timers survived, I will never know...

Earplugs?

BOFH: The Boss has a new watch – move readiness to DEFCON 2

Re: Very nice episode again

Good point. It seems the window hasn't been used lately. Pity that as it would be a good shock test for the watch and wearer.

Japan space agency blows up eight satellites aboard Epsilon rocket

Re: Sensitive image

There's a lot of people down there. I bet some of them were up to no good when the shots were taken.

And some are probably naked. Call in the censors......

Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of

Re: Was the update deployed? Or not?? If so, When?

Yes, they are probably trying to do two impossible (for them) things at the same time - such as think and breathe.

You're being overly generous with the "such as think". More like 'walk and breathe".

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

Re: Notes? How old school!

And this is why you should attend prepared, i.e. already having a good understanding of what is being lectured. (That, of course, depends on knowing beforehand what topic will be covered...)

If you already understand then why go to the lecture?

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

Re: Coat Room

The last place I worked before retiring had a remote office with that same type of closet. They stuffed it with a couple of small servers and all the networking equipment. The staff, having no other place to hang coats still hung them there. In rainy season, they draped plastic over all the equipment. Also, the door was to be permanently left open at all times but newbies often didn't know this and closed it.

That office was 100 miles away from my building. Luckily, I got a very nice milage rate and extra pay for going there. They eventually moved them to a different location with a proper small room for all the equipment that had A/C to it and a locked door.

Fun times indeed.

US accident investigators want alcohol breathalyzers in all new vehicles

Re: one in three traffic fatalities on US roads involve alcohol

There is one....

Re: Regarding touch testing

And if you only have one hand? Or one hand available due holding a coffee cup or something else?

To preserve Earth's treasures, digital silence is golden

Re: Hawaii you say

It did occur to me that telling us where it is is rather against the spirit of the ranger's request.

I wondered the same thing. The genie has been released if only in words. Might have best just to say someth8ing "I know a place...." without telling where it is or it's name.

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

One of the comments above mentions "needing to remove the dust". So, given where these canals run, I would think dust would be an issue. How do plan to remove it and keep the efficiency levels high enough?

NASA scrubs Artemis SLS Moon rocket launch

Re: Fun with Children

No, too many vowels :-)

Or not enough????? I'll get my coat now....

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Unfortunately and wandering off topic I got an email message from a Mr Dabbs saying the SFTW weekend column has been axed so you need to go to https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com to read his latest musings

Just in case others hadn’t seen it

I'm making an assumption that El Reg has someone, somewhere, in charge who's taking everything too seriously. I note that the "Biting the hand that feeds IT" banner has long since disappeared.

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

Re: Terminators and T-Pieces

Paris because, wait, what???

WHERE IS PARIS???

It would appear that she has left us. Or been forced out the door. This is an outrage!!!

BOFH: Who us? Sysadmins? Spend time with other departments?

That does drag the meeting a bit however, so you can go by the old tried and trusted method of find stuff they posted online that will get them fired.

If they haven't posted anything like that, then feel free to post something for them. A BOFH can pull that off and not leave an evidence trail.

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

Re: "Just be like me"

I worked with a developer who had that mindset. He had huge screen for the time and everything thing he developed he locked down the screen resolution for his screen. Trouble was, only him and a few developers had those screens. And it was critical software for the companyt. Everyone else only saw little pieces of the screen. I should mention, scrollbars were disabled also. His response was to scream at complainers to get a larger screen.

He didn't last long once two VP's had a "chat" with his VP. They pointed out that they had laptops and screens that large with the resolution required weren't available.

Scientist shares spicy pic of 'James Webb' discovery

Ah..boffin humor at its finest. It's great to see that the white coat brigade has a sense of humor and like a laugh like the rest of us.

Boffins put supercomputer on the scent of a perfect landfill deodorizer

Re: Sometimes you don't need a high-tech solution.

I've heard of others using those worms not just for fishing bait but also as garbage eaters. It's not a high tech solution which may explain why it's not been tried at scale. Non-high tech might also explain the downvote you received.

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Follow. The. Money.

Spot on. It's too obvious I guess for the researchers. Then again, it's about who's paying for the research.

BOFH: Selling the boss on a crypto startup

Re: and Derek!?

I would suspect that there is a window or even a hole in the woods with his name on it.

Just because you failed doesn't mean you weren't right

Re: Basic QC

Add to the moral.... RTFM.

Re: A miss is pretty obvious, no matter the apparatus

You can have pass/fail OR how close the bomb was because the shock wave could do quite a bit of damage.

Old saying applies and I've heard in the military and in engineering.... "Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear warheads". So may close would have been good.

SCOTUS judges 'doxxed' after overturning Roe v Wade

Re: Pretty much on the nose

Excellent points, AC.

There would need to be "exceptions" to a strong privacy law. Such has being able to investigate crimes or having law enforcement be able to snoop around say drug traffikers, terrorists, and their ilk. But, it could be done. Codifying Roe vs. Wade could have done. There's some who say it allows the government force abortions on people (goes back to the original case and the controversy surrounding it back then.

What should happen is those judges that said in their congressional inaugurations that they consider Row v Wade as president and then later voted it down as soon as they got the chance, should be impeached for lying to congress and removed from the supreme court.

Exactly. Though given the lies (number, not the quality) from the last President what else would anyone expect from those in power?

Disclaimer: I'm neither a Repub or Dem but an Independent. So if were any judge, Dem or Repub, they need to face the music.

Re: Everything here is fine

I detect sarcasm dripping into puddles on the floor. Have a cold one for that.

And yes, the Supremes (the court not the women singers) are demanding that they be protected. I'm wondering when they'll start building moats around their homes with a large assortment of armed guards, maybe some trained bears..

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Re: Stuxnet was discovered (by the public) in 2010

And yet, they did it anyway.

Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets

Re: yellow team?

Not to forget the brown team.

Whatever hit the Moon in March, it left this weird double crater

Re: Possibly

Sounds reasonable to me. But I'll toss this in.. were the fuel tanks completely empty? If not, perhaps there was a fuel explosion?

As always any answer begats two more questions.

First steps into the world of thought leadership: What could go wrong?

Max knows that billions of view won't pay the bills. He's probably doing something that might be somewhat productive.

Totaled Tesla goes up in flames three weeks after crash

Re: Am I the only one

Not at all. While they don't burn oil products they have their own issues that potentially affect the environment.

DMCA can't be used to sidestep First Amendment, court rules

I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Musk will change a lot things if and when (maybe) he buys Twitter.

Investors start betting against Bitcoin with short-trade products

Ponzi Scheme?

Bitcoin, to me, seems to be one. The value increases as more people buy. The catch is.... what have you bought? It's not a stock or a physical product. It's only a product of imagination and the promises of sellers.. smoke and mirrors. Meh.

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

Bin is a useful generic term but we often forget that and assume the "rubbish" (or, for left-pondians, "trash") prefix.

Way back then, I was told that "bin" was short for "binaries" and never, ever delete anything in that directory. That explanation served me well along with others that I trained. But then, this article is about academics and there's too many you can't teach them anything because they're smarter than everyone else.

BOFH: Tech helps HR investigate the Boss's devices

Re: A thing of beauty

Skewered HR - BBQ ready!

It was two for one deal... he got the Boss and HR at same time.

Leave that sentient AI alone a mo and fix those racist chatbots first

Haven't we been warned about AI?

Seems movies and books over the decades have warned us...

Notable but not complete:

"I can't do that Dave" (HAL).

"Shall we play a game?" (Josua).

And a large swath of some writers back the day like Azimov, et al.

Re: Do androids dream of electric sheep again?

What's the point of having so many AI and robots?

Cheap labor most likely. Once the robots have taken over, there won't be any humans employed and earning money to by stuff. So... seems like a goal to kill to kill of civilization or at least all the humans.

Re: It's Hard To Tell If It's Human...

Switching companies doesn't help.

I suspect that there's only one call center in the world for all the companies. it's probably rather large and in someplace like India. But that's my impression from the "people" I've dealt with in call centers.

I was fired for blowing the whistle on cult's status in Google unit, says contractor

Re: Google is a cult?

A "Don't be Evil" cult?

Maybe at one time but they discarded that one a long time ago.

Bill Gates says NFTs '100% based on greater fool theory' amid crypto cataclysm

Thomas Tusser was right.*

Fool and money being parted. Too many fools these days with too much money and not knowing where to spend it.

* Yes, this is the guy who said it. Not PT Barnum.

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

Re: Either James was ready to fly solo on the update or he wasn't

You can have all the reviews you want. They'll make no difference when someone decides to try out a bright idea of their own.

Add to that: ".... or when management is clueless".

Re: "So was James truly the guilty party?"

But hiring and firing minions was the culture...

Was???? I think it still is as one of manglement's jobs is to protect themselves along with their paycheck and bonuses.

Re: "So was James truly the guilty party?"

* neither do some others, but come on Sage, you're a massive company and should have that sorted by now!

Possibly they are too big and those who created this are long gone and this bit has been forgotten.

Meta slammed with eight lawsuits claiming social media hurts kids

Re: Social media is killing us

Usenet over UUCP was available in 1980.

If you take "The Internet" as being based upon TCP/IP, that switchover was made in 1983.

Even if you allow for the pre-TCP-only network as The Internet, it had very reduced availability compared to UUCP so was not used to carry Usenet traffic.

So Social Media was available to many (most?) well before The Internet was.

And somewhere in the early Eighties, spam started rearing it's ugly head. Some groups in Usenet were totally unusable because of it. Not much has changed since then except FB and their ilk have become flashier with graphics and animations. It's still a cesspool one should not go swimming in.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Ikea turntables...

Hmm.... do they have to be assembled? If I remember right, there some available such as Heathkit.