Posts by Snafu1

BOFH: All hail the job cuts consultant

Re: If I'm getting 10% of the "cost reduction" whether changes are implemented or not

#Umm.. why close down an asset that's providing a steady income?

BOFH: On Wednesdays, we wear gloves

"After his exposure to White cat and volcanic island level threats, Gary should^H^H^H^Hcould become a useful pawn in Simon's scheme of things..."

I wonder what Simon could do with a tamed beancounter?.. the imagination boggles!

BOFH: So you want to have your computer switched out for something faster? It's time to learn from the master

On a related note, there's been a surprising lack of carpet-related incidents over the last couple of years; perhaps COVID incidentally reduced the local supply of quicklime?

BOFH: You say goodbye and I say halon

'/Mostly/ nitrogen'..

I wonder which particular element(s) Simon is going to add to that mix..

Re: Am I wrong here?

As Jim says, the 'bends' is due to nitrogen pressurised into the bloodstream, then too rapidly depressurised, so no.

'Nitrogen narcosis' (aka 'dreams of the deep' for divers out there) is a much more subtle hallucinogenic effect caused by a higher concentration of nitrogen in the 'atmosphere' than the body will tolerate: no significant overpressure required.. & handy if effected near to, say, an 'emergency vent window' or similar..

Re: Hmmm...

Plus the localised equipment is likely to have heated to flashpoint upon arrival & deployment of the emergency (explosives) team, so the true 'critical moment' is to get that stuff cooled down ASAP after the charge has gone off, before its fuel reignites..

BOFH: But soft! What light through yonder filing cabinet breaks?

Re: Why, of course...

Dilbert: How are the disgusting abominations today?

Wally: Much faster, thanks!

BOFH: Where there is darkness, let there be a light

Re: Definitely pick which battles you want to fight...

I doubt if either would work with CRTs tho..

BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days

Re: The obverse also applies in some cases

we called the course "Applied Guesswork" Sounds about right for statistics ;)

BOFH: When the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, only then will the UPS cease to supply uninterrupted voltage

Re: Poor cyclist

Ah, Milligan, for whom even the Richards outclassed the Rodneys.. ;)

Re: Reminds me...

Hope he got a bonus.. but I'm a realist :(

BOFH: Despite the extremely hazardous staircase, our IT insurance agreement is at an all-time low. Can't think why

Re: Loved it!

Yer. Started with 'bury the hatchet' & progressed well from there :)

The Pi who loved me: Licensed to SSL

Re: FizzBuzz

Slight correction: Q in Dr No is never identified; Major Boothroyd was only identified as 'Armourer' in both the original Fleming book & the Connery film. Q appears as an individual only later in the series (film or book)

Easy-to-hack combat systems, years-old flaws and a massive bill – yup, that's America's F-35

I miss Lester :( RIP

Hey! A Smokie!

"ALIS? ALIS? Who the f*** is ALIS?

24 years.. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RsrYZ2PA3U

Kenshi: Sandblasted sword-punk D&D where the dungeon master wants everyone dead

Re: Post-apocalyptic

Well, it starts with skin, but progresses to limb removal.. Or you can be captured by cannibals; they always start with legs

Re: You didn't mention the bugs

FWIW most 'stuck' pawns/beasts can be picked up by an unstuck pawn, then immediately dropped to 'unstick' them. Incidentally it's also a good technique used to get large animals into buildings (to fight/heal/trade as you wish)

However one thing you didn't mention here is that the map is not randomly/procedurally[?sp!] generated, altho NPC actions are emergent as stated. This means you can always rely on the same cities & monsters etc being in the same spots on the continent, usually run by the same factions. Mods can randomise this behaviour if you wish (I notice for the pics you're running DarkUI)

The announced & hopefully successful Kenshi 2 will apparentlky be set in the far past, before this map became the post-apocalyptic samurai battleground it now is, but that's a few years in development as yet..

My hole is a private thing – see for yourself

"Instead of jumping on the cloud bandwagon, business leaders will be more concerned about which carriage on the bandwagon they’re going to get on." I think someone's been channelling Gus Hedges..

Man jailed for 3 days after Texas cops confuse cat litter for meth

Re: I'm assuming

ISTR we had one of these in my high school's metalwork workshop; it was known as an oscillating saw & used (as you say) for inconveniently-shaped/sized chunks of metal stock. Lubricant/coolant had to be kept running constantly otherwise it would eat blades..

Other than that it was effectively a heavy-duty powered hacksaw.. but worked /very/ well & was useful for art projects & similar odd things dreamed up by the students (I used it once for pre-shaping xbow prods from stock spring steel)

Re: I'm assuming

"I forgot to mention the test was for semtex. Good luck snorting that."

Gives a whole new meaning to blowing your nose?

Mr Angry pays taxman with five wheelbarrows worth of loose change

Re: He'd be shit out of luck in the UK

"I'm not sure how the pieces of paper felt about this."

Depends upon if they were small & green , shirley?

Going underground: The Royal Mail's great London train squeeze

Greathead shield etc

"Greathead shield system" - a link would be useful (yes I can copy/paste but a direct link from the article would be good)

However, this is really going to screw up my current Mornington Crescent gameplay strategy.. could you add another 2 stops to the SE please.. or maybe 1 S & 1 E?.. ;)

Ofcom fleshes out plans to open up BT's ducts and poles

Re: How many times?

It's difficult to get power over fibre, & AFAICR the 'rules' (WTA 1948 IIRC plus amendments, but I may well be wrong; I haven't checked) still state that at least one landline telephony connection to a premises /must/ be (locally) independent of the Grid, (whether or not the premises' owner uses that connection), for emergency services callout and/or broadcast (the latter for national emergency, eg war, plague or similar)

This leads to battery connections as mentioned below (/above, depending on display), with their concomitant problems, replacement schedules etc..

Sat connections are unreliable (weather conditions) & require power; (buried) fibre is more reliable (mostly - check flooding problems & vermin) but still requires power. There isn't much of a way around this..

'Toyota dealer stole my wife's saucy snaps from phone, emailed them to a swingers website'

Re: Alternatively

It's in the story as posted: the pastor let the salesgeek out of his sight for ~5min /with his unlocked phone/. Plenty of time for a USB connection & d/l of 'pictures' or whatever the directory was named.. prolly enough time for a wifi connection if quick & a decent throughput

Euro Patent Office prez 'a disgrace to France'

Re: Translation

Thanks - a garbled auto-translation is always superseded by someone who knows the language & its nuances..

Ofcom to force a legal separation of Openreach

Re: FTTP vs FTTC

Think of rural farmers (or instance). They are now /required/ by gvt remit to submit their subsistence grants online.. but many don't have BB access of any sort, or any training in how to use or protect themselves from the internet, or the time to learn..

A thought occurs: perhaps they may be able to address some of these problems by hosting a Wifi AP aerial on some bit of unused land? They'd be paid for the land rental & gain (limited) BB access while providing it to 'local' residents too..

Half-ton handbuilt CPU heads to Centre for Computing History

Re: Megaprocessor

What OS? This is all flip-switches

Lib Dems to oppose porn checks in Blighty's Digital Economy Bill

""Of course the internet cannot be an ungoverned space""

STM that the official that wrote that should a) smell the coffee & b) get a life outside the Civil Service.. or possibly the other way around :(

Court finds GCHQ and MI5 engaged in illegal bulk data collection

It's all water under the carpet now (I use the mixed metaphor deliberately)

<list>The lack of /current/ oversight (& enforcement of same) will be a short-term problem (from gvt PoV), easily fixed or more likely ignored due to current political situations (or possibly some scapegoats thrown to the wolves); the boss(es) sidelined to (early) retirement is the usual method. Then re-hired in a slightly different position a year or so later (see Private Eye's 'Revolving Doors' sequence)

The lack of /tactical/ oversight will lead to more problems with the plebs in the near future, which can be ignored as this gvt (or at least this administration) won't be in power at that time.. so they can blame it on a previous administration, natch

The lack of /strategic/ oversight (diluted after several years, if it even gets that far) will lead to an (even) further mistrust of gvt (by the plebs) & the supernumerary powers it makes use of, thus stirring dissent & therefore allowing (the possibility of) foreign agents/influences effective free will using assorted agents, many of whom will be entirely unaware of their role. Think 'black market' & apply it to intelligence roles as well as the traditional goods</list>

Even discounting the local effects (a pleb uprising - remember the size of the anti-Iraq-war demo vs Blair?) if they happen, this leads to a degenerative spiral; whether it's simply for one country (the UK in this case) or Western-world-wide I don't want to predict :(

Cynical? Moi? I don't want this to happen. but given the current Gx leaders I wouldn't be surprised if it did :(

League of lawsuits: Game developer sues cheat-toting website

The whole principle sounds stupid to me

If the alleged cheaters have found a way around the game's system (& have apparently set up a company to do so) then hire them! They can fix game holes while improving their OL notoriety..

TeamViewer: So sorry we blamed you after your PC was hacked

"Finally, TeamViewer wants customers who were breached to get in touch with it and upload their log files. "

What a wonderful idea! Then TV can hold a central repository of info, coded to individual users, allowing access to things such as login times, usage statistics etc showing (with a little bit of data trawling for stats etc) when the next data breach occurs the badhats will be able to disguise their efforts more effectively.

What could possibly go wrong?..

'Windows 10 nagware: You can't click X. Make a date OR ELSE'

Re: Evolve

Have some punctuation: .,;:().. :)

FWIW apart from the gratuitous UI change (menu ordering, locations of .cpl stuff, HLP transmogrified to some obligatory IE-based format etc) that seems to be prevalent on pretty much every 'new' Windoze release, v7 wasn't much different WRT the UI from W2K IMO: it lost most of the XP/Vista 'prettification' that most experts loathed & most newbs found confusing, & introduced proper multi-threading & 64-bit capability (therefore properly utilising those 'new' multi-core 64-bit CPUs that were starting to appear on desktops) rather than the Intel fudge with hyperthreading

Apple at that time were still recovering from their braincrash from the last 15 years or so, & didn't have a /mainstream/ competitor in the desktop/laptop stakes (although they'd been working up capital through iPod sales & phones).. plus IIRC at that point they were still fairly proprietary WRT hardware..

I've given in & installed W10 on most of my personal systems 'cos I'm too old now to be bothered fighting it, but you can be assured that the first time M$ asks me for a CC to perform an 'upgrade', or 'requests' my telemetry details or similar, they'll be told precisely where they can stuff it! That being said, once Classic Shell is installed there aren't that many changes (notwithstanding the GUI cruft mentioned above), so it won't bother me that much..

A UK digital driving licence: What could possibly go wrong?

Re: DVLA

See also Post Office computers :(

Re: Wrong conclusion

"I read the title and jumped to the conclusion that the government was making it illegal to use a computer without having a license!"

TV licensing appears to already do that.. :(

SWIFT moves on security in wake of hacking attacks

SOS!

Help! Help! We're under attack and have no idea what to do! Someone please help!

Have you tried turning it off & then on again, and/or unplugging it from the network? (Well, that's what most Bangladeshi or other 3rd/2nd world 'support' lines seem to say IME..)

Reavers! Google patent would affix pedestrians to car hoods

Re: Adds a whole new meaning to…

Obligatory Tom Lehrer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyoSLOlglw

TalkTalk customers decide to StayStay after £3m in free upgrades

I've been trying to persuade one customer for about the last 7 years (may be longer) to ditch TT as other providers are cheaper, more secure & have better Customer Service. Will they listen? :(

Remind me: are TT still in the bottom 3 of Which? for CS WRT ISPs?

FBI director claims that videoing police is causing crime uptick

Comey [...] did say "something is happening; a whole lot more people are dying this year than last year"

Perhaps because they're shot by cops?

Did Spotify hire Alan Partridge to run its Netflix-style video push?

REMoval or REMover, where the eponymous band play their merry tunes to retirement homes' residents, in order to make more space for incoming candidates

1 band point for resident leaving home

2 band points for resident committing suicide/dying during performance

5 res points for resident(s) violently forcing them to leave the premesis (room for single resident)

10 res points for catatonic resident becoming concsious/aware

25 band points for above catatonic resident immediately attempting suicide

25 res points for above catatonic resident attempting to murder band (time limit: 3 weeks)

Lauri Love: 'Britain's FBI' loses court attempt to evade decryption laws

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html springs to mind..

F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software

Obligatory EE Lightning one-upmanship post here

Must listen: We've found the real Bastard Operator From Hell

Oh that's very good! All that is needed now is the fax handshake (V12? V21? I can't remember..) for comparison (for film/TV sound editors, natch)

Pop goes the weasel! Large Hadron Collider blown up by critter chomping 66kV cable

Re: Dual Redundant Power Feeds?

IIRC - I may well be wrong! - that ~35KV is for the distribution of a small village (ie the wonks' living quarters etc). Approx double that would be needed for powering up the photon generator, or WHY. Plus this scientific village is fairly isolated..

So at huge expense (that sci can't afford) you lay a redundant cable from the 'nearest grid' to enable you to shut down that grid as well due to oversupply, occasionally & with 0 warning?

I'm sure the assorted resident wonks (including our beloved Brian of the floppy hair) are frustrated that their experiments may be delayed, but I'm equally sure that they can apply their time to theoreticals or data analysis in the meantime..

US govt quietly tweaks rules to let cops, Feds hack computers anywhere, anytime

Re: Here we go again

What did happen to Gary McKinnon anyway?

Redback sinks fangs into Oz builder's todger

Re: The builder posed a question to the docs.

How about Flanders & Swann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrdpb-jhHP4

Germans stick traffic lights in pavements for addicts who can't take their eyes off phones

I think I've told this story before, but back around 2K I was was trying to cross Oxford St from Bond St. I waited at a junction with the rest of the crowd, & flung out my arm protectively to catch a woman across the chest/neck who was just about to push her pushchair (with infant) straight into the path of an oncoming taxi (as I was taller I could see the taxi before she could)

No smobes in that case (a bit too early), but can you guess the outcome?

Jaron Lanier: Big Tech is worse than Big Oil

Copyright/Patent

Hmm... ISTM that Copyright (the ability for 'artists'* to claim their own unique work, for a period of time) & Patent (the ability for inventors/engineers to claim a /limited/ timeframe for their unique innovation to be licensed to build copies) is being conflated here

*'artists' include authors, picture daubers, metal/masonry/fish reconstructors (including architects) etc etc

Inventors/Engineers get IIRC 20 years from a patent (+ applicable licensing) to make a living out of producing Something New, that may (or may not) be still going & producing 'better things' for x years in the future.. alternatively it may die due to any reason, including fashion. That's if their patent licence has been (a) granted & (b) they live long enough for (a) to be applicable.. (I'm leaving out (c) their application has been contested then denied by Big Corp lawyers for obvious reasons)

Artists (see above) create something out of 'nothing'. Good for the psyche of those that behold the creation, but other than that..? However, whatever they've created & however it's perceived it'll still get 50 (or 70 or WHY) years' prevention of duplicating, /past the creator's death!/**

So, I can see reasons for artists' copyright time limit (there are very few rich artists, on a global scale), but I can't see parity for engineers/inventors :( OK, some may be working for others (as most artists do: ever heard of 'commissions'?), but shirley Engineers/Inventors should be recognised for who they are, what they do & paid appropriately!

**(I'm deliberately not going into the 'perpetual copyright/patent' situation here as it's far more complex than this bear of very little brain can follow..)

BOFH: Thermo-electric funeral

"A bigger hammer was employed" [...]

One of my favourite sayings: "This looks complicated; I'll need a bigger hammer.."

Useful for any situation, pretty much ;)