Posts by Doctor Syntax

Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card

Wrong word

Let me correct that. On reflection: Automated victim punishment

Obviously not for some people.

"I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed,"

Don't say that. Do it, but don't say it in advance. As to having only copies of terabytes of stuff on somebody else's computer - surely he should have known better.

Also, the purchaser of such a card is the one who's been scammed, having paid money for junk. This is automated victim blaming.

GAO report details faltering Veteran’s Administration records upgrade program

"Back in September, the GAO highlighted how the VA could benefit from the use of AI."

Then they'd have two problems.

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

Fir puns will be kept in abiesance.

"Picea Robotics"

That should spruce things up.

Delay to European Central Bank messaging project cost the Bank of England £23M

Don't be silly. By the time Trump's done with the US economy the Fed Res will be messaging them asking for loans.

Techie 'forgot' to tell boss their cost-saving idea meant a day of gaming

Re: Dension DMP3

Pi and SSD?

Re: Have you found a way to work without really working?

"And so are you."

Not really. I've just sent an email to ask for extra material to be added to tomorrow's visit to the archives and I've another to send for January's visit. Wander down to the gate to bring the bin back up and that's about it for the day.

Retirement.

I remember somebody at a client site who'd just come back from Norway saying it was a great place. You could get anything for 20 quid. A bottle of beer. A sandwich...

Starlink claims Chinese launch came within 200 meters of broadband satellite

Re: Drugs in ink cartridges?

Somebody misunderstood the instructions. They were supposed to be smuggling printer ink disguised as heroin.

Re: SpaceX deflecting much?

"It definitely is on the Launcher firm to check the schedules and orbital trajectories"

In the circumstances finding and hitting a 200metre gap sounds like good work.

Legal protection for ethical hacking under Computer Misuse Act is only the first step

"It may sound like extra work for under-funded, under-loved security teams, except that a hundred good guys hammering at your gates aren't attackers."

Neither are those who are drowning FOSS developers in AI slop reports but too many of them can amount to a DDoS.

Honeypots can help defenders, or damn them if implemented badly

"they suspect the trio are a traveling band of threat actors."

I know street entertainers can be annoying but calling them that is a bit harsh.

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Re: "Mr. {my-name], my screen has gone away! You must come asap! PLEEEEASE!"

"... no colours any more I want them to turn white ..."

The computer will do what you tell it to do. That might be not what you meant or the result of what you meant might not be what you wished for. But you got what you told it to do.

"You expect me to read that?"

"Guess why I wrote it."

Re: Shop floor automation

OTOH his attitude could well have provoked a complaint about abuse and the follow-up would have brought out the illiteracy and consequent unsuiedness for the job. It sounds like a case of just plain stupid.

Automated call handler: "Say your post code and press hash"

Self: ${Postcode}#

ACH: ${Postcode}

(Transfers to agent)

Agent: "Could you tell me your post code?"

Re: Error message

What problems need isn't necessarily what they deserve.

Ahhh. I've just thought of the solution. It requires voice synthesis and the PC's speaker being turned on.

Tell the user to press the trigger Fn key and have it speak the error message loud enough to be heard over the phone.

"Don't worry about what it means, You need to be my eyes for this. Please read the words to me in order."

Of course your problem might be that it's a member of HR who's the user. There is no known method of handling that situation.

That assumes the supervisor will recognise that this was a problem.

"what does the error message say?"

Wrong question. What it says is a different semantic level to the actual words. You've prompted the user onto that level that makes them think you want them to interpret it and it's going to take a lot of work to get them off it.

Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

There's also the possibility that the tape drive is busy with or scheduled for somebody else's job.

Re: Error message

"No idea, I just clicked ok"

This is where you need a little bit of lateral thinking in UI design. The OK button should just pop up another dialog beside the first one saying "Don't just click OK. Ring tech support and quote the exact message to them. Once you've done that they'll tell you the magic key combination to remove the message".

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

How heavy a load would it be OK to put on the flat top? Would it be OK to stack a second CRT monitor on top? And another on top of that? The cleaner's bucket of water?

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

Now that the OP's story has been snapped up for training the Agentic AI would know all about it. OTOH the POFH stories have also been read. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Perhaps the rear should be labelled: "please turn over."

An apple turnover.

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

Kudos for dropping it on the person responsible. Did she learn anything about UI design from that?

Space-power startup claims it can beam energy to solar farms

Re: energy beaming

"could be used to kill & sterilise swathes of farmland or forests"

The current fashion for larger and larger solar farms is doing that unaided.

Re: Why?

"the environmentalists keep getting them shut down at the planning stages"

That's the right stage to get them shut down.

OTOH, remembering that medieval London Bridge had a tide mill, if somebody wants to turn the Thames Barrage into a tidal mill to flood central London twice a day that might be a good prototype to sort out the minor side effects.

Re: Daft question?

Is "evaporated" OK?

Re: Daft question?

"there are quite a lot of complications."

Do these include roast pigeon crashing onto the solar panels?

The CRASH Clock is ticking as satellite congestion in low Earth orbit worsens

Re: Does SpaceX actually have any direct liability ?

Anyone who tries to enforce it will be sanctioned and have their email cut off but be otherwise ignored because the US is exceptional.

Re: Cortez burned his boats

Obviously the colony is going to need some very good leaders from the start. If the riff-raff get there first things will be out of hand. So much better if they're all on the first launch. Make Mars Great Immediately.

"The other thing is that companies suck at considering the risks."

Especially when their horizon is no further than the end of the querter. Or the next quarter if they're far-sighted.

British Airways fears a future where AI agents pick flights and brands get ghosted

Re: Existential branding challenge - sounds like a good idea

As to [4]: a requirement that for a least 2 years after any brand has been traded its advertising and packaging must conspicuously display the information that they're not the outfit that they had previously been.

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

I'm not sure that would be limiting. There are plenty of us here who have outlived several generations of storage device.

The realistic lifetime of storage is the life of the last manufactured or surviving retrieval device.

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

Re: Back to back meetings

If you've got back to back overlapping meetings you can use that to attend none of them.

Re: Talk about flash·backs…

A very long time ago a local engineering works had an Elliot machine (yes, that long ago) and they wanted to move it from one floor to another so decided to move it up the lift shaft with w rope. The knot slipped. AFAICR the surname of the employee who'd tied it on was "Crane", his daughter was in my class at school.

Re: Talk about flash·backs…

Oddly enough it was decided to locate our SEM on the 1st floor and this was a new (re)build although it was given its own concrete slab separate from the rest of the floor with its own set of 6 supporting columns but it was intended mostly for XRF rather than magnification. Some of their images were truly dreadful but maybe those were the ones with gold coating rather than gold.

Re: 650k is enough

And I'd certainly go along with the 1st part of the Decca verdict.

I can't help but wonder how long this New Boss is going to last before he goes to that big meeting from which there is no return.

Re: Fantastic as usual :). kzzzt.

" ERP and the like were easier and faster to use on character terminals if you knew what you were doing"

Definitely.

Re: 650k is enough

All it leaves behind is a carbon footprint.

It was a bit surprising. I was expecting a nasty accident with a heavy but unstable rack.

Workday project at Washington University hits $266M

Would they say 90%, or 95%, 99%, 99.9% or maybe 99.999%?

Or would the be saying less than one in 10,000 failed?

Because if they chose >90% to describe success I wouldn't buy from them.

Learn to read what people are actually telling you.

"more than 90 percent of the SaaS HR and finance application vendor's rollouts were a success,"

That means that up to 10% weren't and that failure might be a real problem for customers who had paid good money for something to make their operations easier. Is that good enough?

Here we go again: Microsoft in UK court over cloud licensing

"which we've all addressed or rebutted."

Addressed or rebutted where? The place that counts for this purpose is in court. If they were successfully rebutted there then perhaps they could have cited the case.

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

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

What sensibilities?