Posts by SamJ

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

My subscription ended 3 months early!

Ny 5 TB subscription was supposed to end in February but at the beginning of November I was told that I had over filled my 15 GB in g drive. Of course, until I had bought another subscription, I could not contact Google drive support. I bought a 1-month subscription for two terabytes which covered what I had in there at the moment, and called them. Within several days they gave me back the cost for my five terabyte annual subscription for the previous year. I then went and purchased a new annual subscription. With that money for five terabytes. I must mostly use it for transferring large backup files from one NAS in the office to the off-site NAS - si I periodically need more space. The outage was more of an inconvenience and a head scratching experience then an emergency. Of course, Google said they had no idea what caused the failure in their subscription system.

We have redundancy, we have batteries, what could possibly go wrong?

The backup generator worked fine when it was needed - until it overheated due to ....

I worked for a national trucking company in the US. We had the largest network of System 38s (both on- and off-site) that IBM had sold to date. We had 3 System 38s in their own room. The rest of us used 8088s or dumb terminals to the 38s. One fine summer day it was VERY hot. All the air conditioners in the area were running full tilt - until the power went out throughout the office park. The generators powered on and the switchover was made seamlessly. We sat with emergency lighting waiting for the power to kick back on. Unfortunately, after about 30 minutes the almost brand-new generator died. Why? The generator (on the roof) had been installed with its air intake sucking air out of the exhaust from TWA's emergency generator. Oh well... Can't think of everything. :{

Wi-Fi not working? It's time to consult the lovely people on those fine Linux forums

Re: "first read the fine forum thread until the end"

Anyone else here old enough to remember RTFM? (Read the F-ing Manual) To those too young, this was the standard (non-spoken) reply to co-workers that would ask you how to use WordPerfect (any version), Lotus 1-2-3, DOS, Windows 3.1, etc.

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

Re: Sorting other people's stuff

If you live in the U.S.A., check with Goodwill. They accept the old machines and train folks to repair and/or recycle them. They also take televisions and other electronic kit. At least locally they do - and I assume that they do elsewhere as well. Also, companies that sell computers (like Staples, Best Buy, etc.) , I think, have to accept kit for recycling.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

Re: Cockroach syndrome

It is cases such as this for which power drill.G_d created power drills

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully lobs another capsule beyond the edge of space

Re: Video of launch ..- IT WORKS FOR ME!!!!

The video works for me (running Win10)

Dev's telnet tinkering lands him on out-of-hour conference call with CEO, CTO, MD

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

Don't forget that PT Barnum, to keep the crowd moving and not overcrowd the side-show tent, famously posted a sign on the exit of that side-show tent that read: "This way to see the egress." It worked, because many folks wanted to see the another strange creature - the "egress."

A boss pinching pennies may have cost his firm many, many pounds

Re: Imagine...

Sounds about right.

Re: Penny pinching boss

When those solid ink printers first came out I worked for a large urban school district where the new director of IT decided that all printers should be networked Xerox Phaser (solid ink, i.e., fancy, expensive square crayons), shared among numerous classrooms. He wanted to make his mark.

He didn't even bother having teachers test them in the schools before buying them. So, what could go wrong?

As you may or may not know, teachers like to print things out (like worksheets, tests, etc.), and then either write on them, or have students write on them. The problem is that a ball-point pen, and sometimes even pencils, cannot write over the wax "ink." Oy! These printers turned out to be quite an issue.

Oh, did I say that they were color printers - and teachers love to print in color! The only problem was that the District decided that the "ink" was too expensive, so they rationed it, and the paper. That left the teachers without tests and worksheets. You can just imagine. (We tried to sneak some old HPs back onto the network.)

Ivory tower drops water bombs on dumpster fire

Trump is indeed "unsuitable to be president" but Hillary is...

Obviously you have not kept up on your current affairs, or have only been listening to one side's propaganda.

Yes, Donald Trump is unfit to be president. He says he understands business and will bring business back to the U.S. - but:

o Outsources his products and his buildings to low-cost non-US companies.

o His companies hire undocumented workers to do much of their work at less than they'd pay citizens.

o His corporations don't pay their bills, and then threaten long-running lawsuits against anyone that insists on being paid for work completed (including the architects and builders of his various Trump properties. (One example is listed in the NYTimes of 7/15/2016)

o His understanding of good business practices includes going bankrupt so that other people and companies have to pay for/clean up his messes.

o He publicly bullies and threatens anyone that disagrees with him.

Hilary may have made made mistakes, but they didn't harm the well-being of others. Because of the Clinton mystique, and a Republican majority in Congress, any mistake that she has made over the course of her career has been magnified by costly, never-ending hearings that further besmirch her legacy. In the end, these partisan hearings end up telling us nothing new, give us no additional ammunition to use against her - but amplify any missteps that she has made.

We know Hilary Clinton's faults. She's made her mistakes, and seems to listen to advisors that are trying to keep her on track. But nobody knows what future undiplomatic, and dangerous directions that Donald Trump and his top advisor (himself) will take us.

'Printer Ready'. Er… you actually want to print? What, right now?

Re: adobe reader

In my case it won't matter whether I use letter, legal or A4 - A***e Reader won't print anything. I am in the position that I have to create reports to .pdf files - and the latest versions of this GDed software won't even print from my machine (Win7 Pro, Dell). No matter what I do, it tells me that I haven't chosen any range or file to print - even after I have. Cannot even print the whole GDed file. @)(&$)(&*$@)#@)(*($*$#)(*@$&@)(*&)&*&)(&*@)(&*@)(&&^_~%)*(&!~+_()!@~#%$&(&*. (That's called self-censorship.)

El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day

Forget VR - this stuff is real!

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

You know, our corporate growth looks much better from this vantage point. Do you think that we could use this knowledge with our investors?

We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Sorry, 'audiophiles', only IT will break the sound barrier

Sparky's Magic Piano

I am THRILLED to see the cover of "Sparky's Magic Piano" on page 1. Am I the only reader that recognized it. My older brothers and I spent many a happy hour listening, and re-listening to it (on 78rpm disks if I am not mistaken). And then there was "Sparky in Orchestraville..."

As they say, "a blast from the past."

Does anyone have a digital copy?

US aviation watchdog approves $75K balloon ride into SPAAAACE!

On the phone? Or texting? Gotta keep that social media up to date...

So... you get these rich nabobs stuck together for a bunch of hours of watching out the window. What would you like to bet that more than one of them will want to be on their phone, either talking or texting? Or maybe on their laptop (bitching about the poor signal) so that they can stay up on their email, Facebook, social media, or trade stocks.... Though theoretically it sounds great, the more that I think about it, the less I'd like to do this.