Re: You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right?
MCSE
Stands for Must Consult Someone Experienced
Posts by DustyP
16 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Oct 2014
You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right? Trust... but verify
Microsoft reveals details of flagship London store within spitting distance from Apple's
Oracle demands $12K from network biz that doesn't use its software
Friday 4th October 2019 13:30 GMT
BOFH
Merula is the preferred ISP for a secretive online conference of BOFHs of which I'm proud to be a member.
We are proud to be the type of people who try software that performs different tasks. No doubt this includes VirtualBox on Merula IPs. This is only as tests.
Oracle needs to recognise this and take the pressure off Richard.
Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?
Sunday 7th July 2019 20:56 GMT
Back in the '70s I worked for a well known Photographic manufacturer.
We had recently been issued with internal phones with buttons instead of dials.
After hours, I undid the case of a colleague's phone and swapped the buttons so that instead of being in phone order (1234567890), they instead were ordered in calculator order (7894561230). It took him days to work out why he was dialling wrong numbers, but when he did, he wrote in the number he expected.
That evening, I swapped them over again and he continued to get wrong numbers.
It stayed that way until I was fired the following year.
ReactOS 'a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel', claims Microsoft kernel engineer
Sunday 7th July 2019 14:18 GMT
Re: Hello from ReactOS team!
Back in the '70s I wrote (and published in Dr Dobb's Journal) a patch to CPM 1.4 that added a /W extension to DIR. This has been active on every version of CPM and its successors since including MSDOS, Windows and REACTOS. If only I had copywrited that patch. I would have made a lot of money.
Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again
Friday 23rd November 2018 22:31 GMT
Re: Remember the Zanzibar Fallacy
Redefining two standards at the same time (I'm certain that they haven't)
The Zanzibar Fallacy
There was once an explorer who came to the tropical island of Zanzibar. Now, it happens that the island of Zanzibar is much longer than it is wide, so that the opposite ends of the island are separated by many miles of hilly jungle country.
This traveller was a naval man by profession, and he had not been long on the island before he was told of a retired naval officer, a countryman of his, who lived at the extreme western end of the island, in a wooden house built high up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.
The explorer thought that he would like to visit his fellow expatriate, so he journeyed to the man's house, taking but one porter with him, for he preferred to travel light and, anyway, was not an excessively wealthy man. The journey took two days, or maybe it was three, but apart from the expected privations of crossing jungle terrain there was nothing remarkable about his trip. Nothing, that is, except that at noon each day he heard the sound of a naval gun, booming out from beyond the hills to the west and scattering the brightly-coloured tropical birds about his head.
When he reached the ex-officer's house he was made very welcome. All morning they sat together on the veranda overlooking the sea, drank chukka pegs, and talked of home and their lives in the navy. As the time approached midday, the owner asked to be excused. He walked to the far end of the veranda, where there was a quarter-pound cannon, and, consulting his watch, fired a single shot at precisely twelve o'clock. 'I do that every day,' he said to the traveller, who understood perfectly his host's desire to observe naval tradition. 'Tell me,' he asked him. 'How do you ensure that you always fire your gun at exactly midday? Do you take sightings?'
'No need,' he other replied. I kept the ship's chronometer from the old Arethusa and I set my own watch to it every morning.'
'Ah,' said the first. 'But how do you know that the chronometer is correct?'
'That is simple. At the other end of the island there is a clockmaker of great renown who keeps all his timepieces in perfect order. Twice a year I send my chronometer to him and he regulates it for me.'
The traveller spent several enjoyable days at the naval officer's house and they became great friends. 'Give my regards to Mister Jones the clockmaker, won't you?' the old seaman said as they parted. 'I will,' the explorer replied, and they shook hands warmly.
Two weeks later, the traveller reached the far eastern end of Zanzibar and there, in a small town nestling under a ridge of green trees and grey rocks, he found Mr Jones' shop. It was a shop such as you may find anywhere there are clocks and watches to be made or mended – dim and cool, filled with the soft sounds of ticking and chiming. Our explorer introduced himself to the clockmaker and, noticing how well all the watches and clocks in his shop were synchronised, asked him how he made sure that they were all keeping the right time.
'That is simple,' the clockmaker responded. 'At the other end of the island there is a retired naval officer who, every day at twelve o'clock precisely, fires a gun. I set all my clocks by him.'
Friday 23rd November 2018 16:44 GMT
Remember the Zanzibar Fallacy
Redefining two standards at the same time (I'm certain that they haven't)
The Zanzibar Fallacy
There was once an explorer who came to the tropical island of Zanzibar. Now, it happens that the island of Zanzibar is much longer than it is wide, so that the opposite ends of the island are separated by many miles of hilly jungle country.
This traveller was a naval man by profession, and he had not been long on the island before he was told of a retired naval officer, a countryman of his, who lived at the extreme western end of the island, in a wooden house built high up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.
The explorer thought that he would like to visit his fellow expatriate, so he journeyed to the man's house, taking but one porter with him, for he preferred to travel light and, anyway, was not an excessively wealthy man. The journey took two days, or maybe it was three, but apart from the expected privations of crossing jungle terrain there was nothing remarkable about his trip. Nothing, that is, except that at noon each day he heard the sound of a naval gun, booming out from beyond the hills to the west and scattering the brightly-coloured tropical birds about his head.
When he reached the ex-officer's house he was made very welcome. All morning they sat together on the veranda overlooking the sea, drank chukka pegs, and talked of home and their lives in the navy. As the time approached midday, the owner asked to be excused. He walked to the far end of the veranda, where there was a quarter-pound cannon, and, consulting his watch, fired a single shot at precisely twelve o'clock. 'I do that every day,' he said to the traveller, who understood perfectly his host's desire to observe naval tradition. 'Tell me,' he asked him. 'How do you ensure that you always fire your gun at exactly midday? Do you take sightings?'
'No need,' he other replied. I kept the ship's chronometer from the old Arethusa and I set my own watch to it every morning.'
'Ah,' said the first. 'But how do you know that the chronometer is correct?'
'That is simple. At the other end of the island there is a clockmaker of great renown who keeps all his timepieces in perfect order. Twice a year I send my chronometer to him and he regulates it for me.'
The traveller spent several enjoyable days at the naval officer's house and they became great friends. 'Give my regards to Mister Jones the clockmaker, won't you?' the old seaman said as they parted. 'I will,' the explorer replied, and they shook hands warmly.
Two weeks later, the traveller reached the far eastern end of Zanzibar and there, in a small town nestling under a ridge of green trees and grey rocks, he found Mr Jones' shop. It was a shop such as you may find anywhere there are clocks and watches to be made or mended – dim and cool, filled with the soft sounds of ticking and chiming. Our explorer introduced himself to the clockmaker and, noticing how well all the watches and clocks in his shop were synchronised, asked him how he made sure that they were all keeping the right time.
'That is simple,' the clockmaker responded. 'At the other end of the island there is a retired naval officer who, every day at twelve o'clock precisely, fires a gun. I set all my clocks by him.'
The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can't, in a fraction of the time
It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!
Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?
Monday 26th February 2018 03:52 GMT
Re:wierd power glitches
Cleaners unplugging essential plugs so she can plug in a vacuum cleaner...
I can beat that.
In the mid '80s, I was the senior technical engineer for a London company that sold systems that shot computer graphic slides onto 35mm film. We sold a system to a photographer in Zurich, Switzerland.
It all worked perfectly for a couple of months, shooting two or three hundred frames overnight.
One day, the customer phoned in a panic. For three nights, it had only shot a few dozen before failing overnight.
I took a flight from Heathrow with my box of spares.
The camera was kept in the owner's office which was on the first floor with a large window overlooking the main studio which was used in the evenings for photographing ladies wearing very little at most.
I measured all the voltages from the sockets, and leaving the meters connected, sat in a chair by the window while the camera clicked every few minutes while I gawked at the action below. Girls would come out of their dressing room topless or naked while the photographer took his pictures. At 3am, the entire batch of slides had completed successfully so I reprocessed the entire batch after checking the output of the UPS again. I was tired, so turned out the light in the office and sat back in the chair where I could gawk at the four lovely models downstairs fiishing their photo shoot.
I fell asleep, only to be woken by the office light coming on. It had been switched on by a naked brunette who quickly took the towel from where it was drying her hsir and wrapped it round her nether regions.
"Ich brauche, um meine Haare trocknen" she told me "I need to dry my hair."
She told me that with four girls in a dressing room with only two sockets, for the past few nights, she always came up to the office to use a socket for the hair dryer. She unplugged the main plug from where it fed a supply to the IBM AT (shows how long ago it was). "Don't worry, I'll plug it back in when I've dried my hair" she told me in German while her boobs jiggled in front of me. I was too angry to tell her off but my client ensured that his office was always securely locked at night.
'Please store the internet on this floppy disk'
Saturday 23rd December 2017 07:02 GMT
Re: Where is my office?
Back in the '70s, I had a user who was going on holiday with his girlfriend from a different company. His girlfriend had put an 'away from office' message on her email. The guy did as well before leaving for two weeks in the sun and sending an email to the girlfriend saying that he was just leaving.
When he got back, his inbox was full of 'Re:Away from office - Just leaving' messages, 'Re:Re:Re:' etc. received every few seconds.
I soon replaced the POA with one that recognised replies replies to replies anf ignored them.
Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar
Saturday 16th December 2017 16:24 GMT
Re: Can't we get rid of May?
Only 37% of people entitled to vote voted leave.
...and this was in a referendum that was supposed to be 'advisory' to the government. Not blindly follow the decision.
The entire referendum was badly planned and the advertising by the leave group was criminally false. - In the leaflets that were delivered to every house claiming that Turkey was about to join the EU and hence Syria.
Those responsible should be prosecuted.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
