Posts by TDog

How Microsoft gave customers what they wanted: An audience with Bill Gates

Paul Kay

Dead now, had a memorable phone call with Microsoft support. This was about their original basic and the flood fill for a closed shape didn't work. This was at about DOS2.x level. He rang up the States using his work phone, and was told "yes we know it overflows to fill the whole screen." Paul simply and effectively demonstrated that only a bunch of wankers would still carry on selling something they new was defective. After several minutes of sledging the minion (78 employees in microsoft) he finally replied, "We can't change that code, Bill wrote it."

Anecdotal, obviously.

Claude is his copilot: Rust veteran designs new Rue programming language with help from AI bot

Re: OK here we go . . .

I nicked it from some bloke in the pub. That was in my single days when I used to go into the pub at 7.30, get St. Ivelled (5 pints) and then go home at 10:30, about 750 pages later. It took a day and a bit and didn't particularly inspire me, albeit I remember thinking that if a small thin gold disk on a pioneer probe was how you found a planet, what the fuck was wrong with wireless sigint? Before that I read as a fantasy, one of which was "Slaves of sleep". Good enough for the 17 year old who read it. After the sad failure of dianetics to become a fiasco I didn't read any more. But nicked books were free.

It was good enough for a "b fillum" but trivial and ignorant of anything but bullshit. It was good enough to keep me going through the 1000 pages aided by 5 pints. So that is what it was worth to me.

Home Office staff still leaning on 25-year-old asylum case management system

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

My daughter's tier one apeal for PIP was a rehearing directed to be held because the previous tribunal had made 3 substantive (i.e. enough that any one of them would have sufficed to invalidate the result) errors of law in a 4 page document. Ignoring the gross inefficiencies there, the situation was compounded as the higher tribunal had directed that all three members of the panel (chair, social / lay person and doctor) were to be recused.

It was a phone hearing; at 9.45 for a 10.00 hearing it was cancelled as, I was informed, "We're sorry but the judge and the doctor are the two who have been recused and can't sit in this case."

This was an administrative error. No compensation was offered for my wife having to cancel 20 patients at very short notice thereby suffering a substantial loss of income. No apology to the patients who undoubtedly blamed my wife. No offer for the stress caused to my daughter who had had 4 tribunals already.

If the buggers can't even manage simple things like following clear instructions from a higher court, what chance does any system requiring input have? Remember the citizens of this country have rights too and let's deal with them before potential citizens, refugees, criminals or whatever who have elected to come to this country. We were born here, if we can't even treat ourselves fairly I have little hope for any one else.

Starlink claims Chinese launch came within 200 meters of broadband satellite

Re: Not from the devil ?

ai, ai.

UK tax collector falls short on digital efficiency, watchdog says

Re: Ho-Hum here we go again ... again ... again ... again ... ... ... ...

It probably will in the 22nd century, and be considered as modern and upto date.

UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Well I have been a Parish Councilor and that in the largest parish in England. Strangely enough I didn't get paid at all. Ever. And the expenses were minimal, just out of pocket to the tune of very few pounds. No loss of earniings comp. or anything like that.

SpaceX shows off progress on its lunar Starship

Re: 49 milestones

There was an apocryphal story doing the rounds in the days when computers and very large furniture vans were about the same size.

Apparently the Soviets programmed their most modern machine and asked if how long till we achieve true comunism?

The reply was 58,196 miles.

This stumped everybody until a junior technician stood up with a horrified look on his face. "I think I understand, comrades". On being asked to explain he repled. "Well you know how we are often saying another step on the route to true communism..."

Norway's £10B UK frigate deal could delay Royal Navy ships

WW1

In percentage terms, 18% of British Generals that served during World War One would lose their lives during the conflict.

To put that into perspective, the British Army fielded a total of 8.7 million men during World War One. Total casualties of killed, captured, or wounded amounted to 1.5 million, or around 17.6%. The rate of attrition for those ranking Brigadier-General or higher is in line with the overall casualty rate.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Facts tend to overule BlackAdder.

Starship troopers

Oh please do. It's over 65 years old and was written as a young adult novel. Admitedly it is significantly more complex than the film but you still might learn a bit. It was also written 14 years after USA's WW2 experience by a naval veteran. Prior to Vietnam and that national shit show of trauma, for both sides. The fillum was simply abyssmal.

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

Very large EM(P's) are caused by atmospheric cascades of charged particles. Due to the lack of such particles in significant quantities at the heights of GPS orbits EMP is a less efficient tool. Beter to use shotgun techniques of lots of little bits going very fast.

Print Screen is for noobs: Capture images in Windows like a pro

Snagit

Works for me

Army and Navy have both asked for right to repair, now Senators want to give it to them

Re: Will need to make the repairs Squaddy Proof

And if you think this level of stupidity is bad, just ask why Putin's great invasion stalled on the road to Kiev.

Semiconductor industry could short out as copper runs dry

Lustrous

"demand for the lustrous metal i"

My arse, It forms stable oxides in air, so if it were lustrous it wouldn't be for long. Perhaps the author is confusing it with silver, which has better conuctivity at room temperature and stays lustrous just so long as it is kept polished

Post Office and Fujitsu execs 'should have known' Horizon IT system was flawed

Re: How long????

Did you actually listen to the hearings? I'm retired and I did. If Sir Win can get out a fair and equitable report by next year I shall be most impressed. Remeber that whilst many of these people have been, and probably correctily damned in the the general view it is a principle of law that they are allowed to defend themselves. (Well, they were "assisting" the enquiry, even when they had been subpoenad. "Thank you for helping us today" with no mention it was being done with a gun at their head. Contenpt of court allows Sir Win to send them to the clinc without a jury trial.

There are only two major things that concern me re justice.

1) The police have already indicated that they have in excess of 30 persons of interest but cannot procede with their investigations until the enquiry reports.

2) Paula Vennels has a potential case of contempt of parliament outstanding as she knowingly and deliberately lied to the select commitee investigating the scandal. Until Parliament acts on this or waives its priviledge then it has a prior claim on her, and no prosecution can be brought agaist her (IANAL and this is simply my understanding of this).

UK to buy nuclear-capable F-35As that can't be refueled from RAF tankers

More a interservice political deal

Strangely, over a five to ten year period the average spend on RAF, RN and Army used to work out about 30,30,30 plus a little bit for the important things. Having tactical nukes removed from the RAF reduced their roles to deep penetration (as shown by desert storm, to be vastly successful) or close air support (combat, not support roles) which is another way of committing suicide. So the nuclear capable bit gives the RAF additional bidding rights for the odd ten percent. And, of course, they are now part of the UK's Nuclear Deterrant.

SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... while still on the ground

Re: Starship - a poem by Baldrick

ORION Starship - a poem by Baldrick

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM...

FFY

UK dumps £2.5 billion into fusion pipe dream that's already cost millions

Re: exceeded the amount of energy that went into the reaction chamber

Actually Elgaar intensly disliked the song. He thought it was too jingoistic / nationalistic

Europe is Russian to sanction Putin's pals over 'hybrid' threats

No longer part of Europe!

If we are not part of Europe, what are we? Did Trump grab us along with Greenland in a yet to be reported act from God?

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Surely simpler to stick with correct English

I'd forgotten that, have a plus 1.

Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends

Re: Speed, that's the truth.

"the legal truth", as opposed to PRAVDA which means official truth. I'm sure there is a grain of truth in there somewhere.

Developer scored huge own goal by deleting almost every football fan in Europe

Re: Deleted nearly every football fan in Europe

The letters, or national identifiers, you can have are:

UNITED KINGDOM, United Kingdom or UK

GREAT BRITAIN, Great Britain or GB...

Source, as above.

(oops)

Pentagon kills off HR IT project after 780% budget overrun, years of delays

Equal Opportunity

""I need lethal machine learning models," Hegseth said. "Not equitable machine learning models." "

Alas, the days of equal opportunity killers seems to be coming to an end. Could be a bit sad, as training for equitability implies discrimination against biases. That implies identifying those biases. That may well have been an opportune mode of target sifting.

Surprise! People don't want AI deciding who gets a kidney transplant and who dies or endures years of misery

Diana

My first serious girlfriend had kidney failure. She was in her very early twenties. Pain management wasn't what it was today and you couldn't go to Switzerland. So she tried to kill herself and failed. That meant she would never get a transplant as she might do the same again. (Intellectually I understand and agree with that decision). But of course she knew that and after a couple of years she succeded in her prior ambition.

Still miss you Diana.

Seems to me it doesn't matter what you do, someone will get screwed, And I think that is the first Topic I have initiated here.

Judge says Meta must defend claim it stripped copyright info from Llama's training fodder

Re: What if ...

Having been accused of plagiarism by the open university (the quote was referenced, in italics rather than plain text, but comitted the heinous crime of not having an end quote, I am able to speak about the processes that the OU used. It used an automated software detector without any human overview. It generated an automatic warning without any human overview. I checked the OU's minutes of their executive board meeting which authorised this use of software and it was noted in the minutes that things like this could happen. Strangely there was no discussion as to mitigation nor was there a clear path to follow to resolve such issues.

Sort of,

"Oh look, you're fucked", followed by

"Oh look, you are fucked".

UK must give more to ESA to get benefits of space industry boom, says Brian Cox

Re: Um....

And they have no interest in being commercially successful at the risk of internal stress. Multifunded by nations they are a soft ride to a safe future, whereas those in it for profit rather than prestige or overnment subsidy seem to me more efficacious in the medium term. Blue Origin, SpaceX and a host of small rocket entryists, many of whom will presumably be subjected to those commercial pressures.

How the collapse of local cloud provider caused biz continuity issues in UK government

I have to disagree

" Private sector welfare and disability assessment, another outsourcing failure".

My daughter who has severe fibromyalgia along with major arthritis issues had absolutely no issues what togever to get PIP. Admittedly I had to go to the original hearing as:

* her representative in her initial hearing (appeal rejected)

* her representative in her appeal hearing (appeal rejected)

* Write her request for permission to appeal to a Tier 1 tribunal (unpaid for all of this)

* Read her response from the request to appeal to that appeal (this bit is just unbelievable) Appeal denied as it wasn't necessary; 5 major flaws in law in a three page judgement.

* Attend the new phone heard case along with my wife, which was cancelled 15mins before the appeal as apparently no one had noticed that the three judges had been recused from th original case. (Well I did but apparently that was insufficient until the court had already been assembled - when someone finally bothered to read the papers. We had no prior notice of the panel, and so could not challenge it in advance) My wife took an unpaid day off work, leading to about 20-30 patients being cancelled at relatively short notice, with no compensation for their fuck up, but they sent my daughter an email which said they couldn't send it to me as I wasn't her representative [ Want to take a bet on that ] but no offer of compensation nor any sugestion that they would do anything to ensure this didn't happen again (like, read the paperwork, you know, it can't be that hard. Perhaps between important things like making a cuppa , or sucking the arse of the boss).

* Getting a letter which said they had decided there were no problems, ands thus removing all support. The Dr involved assumed that my daughter had walked to the shops, refused to listen to me as "they were now getting somewhere". After she had demonstrated that she had the forensic skills of a dead wasp I could finally ask a simple question; "how did you get to the shops, {name}", to which she replied "You drove me there". And how often have you done this ("not sure but 2 or three times in the last year"). This was followed on by "I see from your medical reccords provided that you have an almost normal range of motion of your arms, how do you explain that?" Again she would not let me help her with her desire to read that was which not there. Eventually I got a chance to make the point that this was passive movement (i.e. someone moving her arms, did not describe the pain involved as it was an assessment for osseus blocks), and got the response: "Oh I didn't notice that." Being the noce friendly chap that I am and bloody furious I asked the tribunal to adjurn until a competant medical advisor could be found. And then asked her where she qualified and if that was there normal standard.)

* eventually getting a letter from DWP who said that they had agreed my daughter needed the highest level of attendance allowance buts the tribunal had decided she didn't need mobility allowance. Which also stated "In view of previous decisions I have decided to overide that action

So no, I think you are as deluded as the system if you think there are any issues at all.

(Oh, and BTW, before I entered IT I was a clinician, and if I had made most of the mistakes they did then I would have been suspended, if not struck off.

So, it may or not be private, but fuck them all.

+1 for accuracy.

Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender

Re: Keeping a backup...

Been their, particularly with Access DB's. And as I have said before, never script a change to a SQL database with an Alter statement. Use the create instead. Then when you actually hit run through stupidity or an all nighter, it will whinge and tell you "object already exists' Only took me about 5 years of fuck ups to drill that into whatever thinks between my ears.

Re: Ouch!!!

How do they rise up?

Reminds me of many marching songs - they really made a difference in keeping in step after far too many bloody miles.

Blue Origin spins up lunar gravity for New Shepard flight

Re: Extremely unique...

So far, a unique response. But should someone reply to you too, it's uniquity shall disapear with the sands of time. So limited temporal uniqueness. Almost almost unique.

What happens when someone subpoenas Cloudflare to unmask a blogger? This...

Re: First Amendment

No body seems to have provided any evidence that the alleged offence (writing the blog) occured in the UK. If it didn't then what jurisprudence does the UK governent have to hear the case? And since libel has to be published, if the alleged libeler typed a letter in the UK which was published in the US, would the UK have jurisprudence? If it does not then what is the difference between the keystrokes being made in the UK, but the upload to a server occurring outside the UK, such as Russia, Albania, or, maybe the US to name but three honorable and trustworthy states...?

Re: First Amendment

It's also a crime against microwaves;

We told Post Office about system problems at the highest level, Fujitsu tells Horizon Inquiry

Re: Lessons ?

I was once in court over a poll tax bill and challenged the veracity of the statements produced by Birmingham City Council's computer system. An affadavit was produced by their chief IT honcho to the effect that "the system was working in the normal manner...". I challenged that, pointing out that wording merely meant that the system was working as usual, not accurately. The basic response from the lay magistrate was something along the lines of "Oh dear" and the court paused whilst the professional lawyer who advised the court (clerk of the court) informed the magistrate of the consequences of acting on that information - that literally thousands of bills and fines might have to be repayed.

Eventually I sugested that I could help resolve the issue by agreeing to pay the £21,37 without prejudice and justice continued in its sureal manner. Best half day I ever took off from work - the entertainment value was superb. When I got to the court there were literally over 1000 cases to be heard and only 1 defendant attending. Me. I had anticipated waiting for ever whilst all of the cases for defendants whose names staarted with A-->M were tried but instead the clerk of the court simply said "is anyone here defending a case" and I stood alone. All the others were dealt with as a single entity in abstentia and as having pleaded guilty.

Ah, the theatre of Justice being seen to be done.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

My main issue with smart meters is they can be remotely controlled. Too much sparky stuff being used in my county, London isn't getting enough for their high speed trading systems, quickly, reduce the number of users of sparky stuff. "No problemo, I have a little switch..."

NATO tests aquatic drones to protect cables, coastlines

It may well be 60K drone hours - running a flotilla of drones simultaneously.

Academic papers yanked after authors found to have used unlicensed software

Trouble is it leaves you a complete hostage to others. Imagine, you have just finished 5 years of seminal work on spermiferous tubules. It is your lifetime achievement and your doctoral thesis. You submit it for publication and... The publication notices that your uni's subscription to Word is 6 days out of date - the work is withdrawn and your doctorate viva canceled. All for want of a horseshoe.

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

Re: Computer wiped every month ?

Aye, and since Ogham has no notation for numbers you won't ever be sure of exactly what you are getting.

NHS would be hit by 'significant' costs if UK loses EU data status, warn Lords

Re: Erm

I'm sorry to but into what is almost a private fightclub but might I point out that the value of EC co-operation on medicines was such that they, under the aegis of Ursula Van Lieden, attempted to hijack vaccines that had been developed in Cambridge and produced in Belgium for their own citizens (mertitocrats and beurocrats first?) against their own rules and only backed down under extreme pressure. The NHS is not perfect or good at many things including treating me, but at least I don't have to worry about them stealing (sorry, misappropriating) my medicines for their political convenience.

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

Re: 70 meters tall?

Shirley the question should be "how many metres are 70 Giraffes, and where are the feet placed on the Giraffe immediately underfoot. The image of Giraffes teetering on each others heads (facing backwards and forwards to avoid toppling) is strangely compelling.

Scientists demonstrate X-rays as a way to zap asteroids out of Earth's path

Doesn't scale

2 obvious reasons

1) Keeping the beam tight, possibly including issues with thermal atmospheric blooming.

2) Providing sufficient energy in the beam ("22 MJ of stored energy into an electric current pulse"), does not describe how much energy was in the actual beam. At physically larger sizes initial bloom from the target will tend to prevent the beam hitting the solid target beneath the vapourised material. I would like to see some scaling evaluations, not just small scale testing.

Boeing union workers in US reject contract: 96% vote to strike

I's seriously worse than that. Their previous settlement was a pay cut that left them earning less than barristers. So this doesn't really do anything other than partially reinstate the saus quo ante.

SpaceX tries to wash away Texas pollution allegations

Dihydrogen Monoxide

Is not only toxic in doses less than 1Kg through inhalation but is also a very powerful greenhhouse gas. There are far too many systems taking relatively innocuous methane (which has an upper atmospheric lifetime of a few years) and converting it to Dihydrogen Monoxide which has no measurable half life in the atmosphere). This must stop NOW!!!!!!! Please won't someone think of the children (who are already composed of about 60% by mass of this toxic chemical).

Please?

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

Re: "cost and lack of charging infrastructure"

i thought the green sticker referred to "little green men", universally known to be caused by nuclear power and or anal probing aliens

Azure VMs ruined by CrowdStrike patchpocalypse? Microsoft has recovery tips

How many wake up calls do we need?

And even more terrifyingling, How many have we got left?

Re: feline overlords

+1 for Hitchikers reference

Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch cleared of all charges in US Autonomy fraud trial

HP still has a damages claim in the civil courts.

So what happens next? USA states no fraud; UK rules an offence committed. HP claims damages in UK. Will this be the nominal £1 paid into court rather than (from recollection) £4Bn?

Ex-Space Shuttle boss corrects the record on Hubble upgrade mission

Re: Obsoleted?

Torpedo, spotting and Reconnaissance Mk 2; better known as the Swordfish. Simply the ultimate naval strike aircraft of WW2, in terms of kills per airframe.

Re: Obsoleted?

Strangely enough, scrapping the TSR2 may have been the correct decision. It had a very niche role; instant sunshine over Moscow or similar places. From memory, it was not a bomb truck, which was what the Tornado IDS was. As such, although not as aesthetically pleasing or unique as the TSR2, the Tornado was a far better in service aircraft than the TSR2 would have been. Bonus point question; which iconic aircraft was the original TSR2?

IT consultant-cum-developer in court over hiding COVID-19 loan

Liquidation

I chose to liquidate my company instead, due to my advancing (does it ever do anything otherwise?) age, and rely on the parliamentary assurances given by the PM "other sources of support".

After a much longer delay I was refused those sources of support (Universal Credit), because "the law doesn't allow us to give it to you". And that was the full explanation I was given. Perhaps I should have taken the loans and fled to Yorkshire, nobody gets extradited from Yorkshire.

Judge refuses to Ctrl-Z divorce order made by a misclick

Re: Does it work the other way round?

Or even worse (or better perhaps) A+B+C, and D+D. D+D is acceptable to the software in a civil partnership, or should be as there is no reason why Peter Jones should not get hooked up with Peter Jones.