* Posts by Dabooka

1217 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007

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One of the last of Bletchley Park's quiet heroes, Betty Webb, dies at 101

Dabooka

How jolly sad

The work they did was immeasurable, and the conditions rather grim in certain circumstances too.

Coincidentally I have just finished The Emperor's Codes, a great book for anyone interested. Despite reading plenty in the past about Bletchley, this book still offered significant amount of new information especially about how the US pollical scene was in the run up to them joining. I will admit now much on how the ciphers worked went right above my head!

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Dabooka

I've met 'tyrant'

Or another incarnate at least.

I think in educational circles they must simply buzz around from institution to institution until they run out of places to go

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

Dabooka

If only..

Someone had through to reply to the entire list asking them to stop replying to the entire list.

That always works

UK's biggest mobile operator starts 3G switchoff, hopes it won't catch out April fools

Dabooka

What differnece does it make?

Mine has never worked properly anyway

Vodafone: Be in the office 8 days a month or lose bonuses

Dabooka

It will ultimately limit their recruitment

In my line of work folk actively ask in recruitment phases what the hybrid / WFH policy is, as would I. Some days I'm back to back on Teams, well I'm at home for that thank you very much otherwise I'm off elsewhere

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go

Dabooka

Always the same

For all there ability and creativeness, they lack simple cognition for covering their tracks. I'm utterly bemused by the failings of these rogue admins, they must want to be caught for notoriety

The Register gets its claws on Huawei’s bonkers tri-fold phone

Dabooka
Stop

Further proof if were needed

That just because we can, does not mean we should

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Dabooka

They picked the wrong countries

If they thought this would remain confidential and in house they picked the wrong places to pilot it in.

Ridiculous decision and everyone knows it's about cost saving. But will the PHB get the blame for this? Of course not

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

Dabooka

Please, please, please....

STOP giving the spoilers away in the headline!

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

Dabooka

15% you say?

I thought that was about industry standards nowadays anyway

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Dabooka

Here's an idea

Bright pink or fluorescent green might help in the future.

I await my cheque in the post

Hold my Pimms! Wimbledon turns to tech for line-ball calls

Dabooka

What a shame

Although I suspect its implementation will be better than the farce which is VAR, it is a shame to see it going tech.

As Half Man Half Biscuit would say, 'Surely a bit of controversy is part of the game's appeal'

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Dabooka

Re: Early days

Linking back around to SMS, Nokia *always* seemed to insist 'pint' was 'riot'

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Dabooka

Amstrad?

They seems somewhat absent from these writeups

Hong Kong authorities halt alleged smuggler shifting 596 'high-end' CPUs to China

Dabooka

Re: Thanks for the memories

Okay...?

Techie invented bits of the box he was fixing, still botched the job

Dabooka
Go

Re: "I am not a number," ... MagicSix

Well worth the jaunt, it's really rather lovely.

I had the pleasure of going last summer although my son and his two friends were not overly bothered about Rover, Lotus Sevens or much else (although the fatality chess game seemed to garner their interest).

Cops finally unmask 'LockBit kingpin' after two-month tease

Dabooka

They messed up here

They should've just gone and 'false flagged' some attacks against the Kremlin and FSB, let the Ruskies tidy up their own mess

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

Dabooka

Re: This is where technology lets you down

Yep, been there and done that.

Those lovely brown internal mail envelopes and countless pigeon holes made it oh so easy to have japes. Nothing malicious or particular time wasting mind

BOFH: I get locked out, but I get in again

Dabooka
Thumb Up

Re: Nothing on one...

Great reference!

Belgian ale legend Duvel's brewery borked as ransomware halts production

Dabooka

Another swing and a miss

Why not bloody Brewdog instead and us all a favour in the process?

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Dabooka

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

They do have mini kegs but I personally find them gimmicky and difficult to get a decent pint out of without some being wasted or the latter pints being a bit too flat. Watney Party Sevens were notoriously worse

For cask ales and ciders from the breweries they can be great. I often get them for gatherings at my house when we'll be on an ale and it doesn't matter anywhere near as much

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Dabooka
Joke

Re: Let's Check the Server Room Access Log

Lol, check the 'access log'

Good one that :D

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

Dabooka

No, not in the slightest

Especially when we're still paying the price for selling it off and witnessing first hand what a disaster it is putting essential national infrastructure into private hands

Survey: Over half of undergrads in UK are using AI in university assignments

Dabooka

Re: An easy solution

It's about how it is implemented, copy and paste is already covered in the usual plagiarism academic regs of the institution.

We need to be better at how it is implemented and utilised, focus on the research elements it can support but not to rely on output. We've had these discussions before, thirty years ago with the rise of the WWW and even bloody word processing before that,

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Dabooka

Re: Another one bites the dust

Fuzzy Logic was also used a title for The Super Furry Animal's first album, and a banger it was too

Can't think of any other practical examples?

Doom turns 30, so its creators celebrate seminal first-person shooter’s contribution to IT careers

Dabooka
Pint

They're not wrong

Our early LAN parties saw token ring cards pilfered and network play in my mum's dining room. The movement required for four players was so great it invariably planned the whole weekend as towers, CRTs, keyboards etc were lugged about and setup, resulting in a whole weekend of varied gameplay.

Doom, Quake, Rise of the Triads, Heretic and even strategies such as C&C, Red Alert all found their way on to our (by know) TCP network. Pizzas and beer also featured

Happy days...

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Dabooka

Take sme back to college days

Doing A Levels 1991-93. Apparently TP was used as its structuring was a good basis for the real world apparently.

Knowing what I know now I work in the sector myself, it was probably as much to do with the fact it was cheap! I am pretty sure there were grumblings back then it was already obsolete although I can appreciate why for someone's the first dip into programming how it would have been a reasonable choice back then. Maybe. I don't know, I never took it up in any sense afterwards.

(And for those outside the US, college here in Blighty is post compulsory school, so was then usually attended between 16-18 years of age)

NASA just patched Voyager 2's software but spared Voyager 1 the risky rewrite

Dabooka

Absolutely unreal achievement Those distances are just mind boggling

Dabooka

Always very impressive

However surely it's time they bought them back for a service? Maybe a wash down, upgrade to a Pi 5 or something

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

Dabooka

Re: Is there anyone

Just about to post this very thing.

Oh so very cock sure, so very confident, so very fucking naïve!

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Dabooka

Re: Fun with magnets.

I do love it when heroes come along and hide by the AC mask

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Dabooka

Re: Trading Places

I agree wholeheartedly, would be an upgrade on what we have.

Actually I'll take her here at work too

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Dabooka

Re: Three

Three are notoriously patchy with their coverage although they do make a reasonable punt (compared to others) at kind of acknowledging it and Durham has always been a bit weird when it comes to coverage

Dabooka

Re: What does this mean in practice?

Similar to me, although it's just a small patch on my commute so not too bad.

I assume that 4G or 5G (stop laughing at the back) will pick it up

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Dabooka

My own experince tells me

Somewhere they'll be managers in marketing or other departments who called this bullshit out for what it was; they'll have had had their cards marked for being against it and yet now, after being proven correct, they'll remain a pariah. For making the bleeding obvious call all along.

PHBs never go back and promote the guy who correctly went against their idea.

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

Dabooka

Re: Should this be so easy?

That be yer 'hot' lead for kettles, steam generators and the suchlike.

And I think the problem is that with so many PSUs being switchable, the lead would be mooted irrelevant anyway.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Dabooka

Re: And Arnie? He will not be back.

Probably correctly from my reading of it?

Maybe a bit harsh.

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

Dabooka

Re: At least you fixed the problem.

To be honest that description of the DC extends to most of Milton Keynes in general

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

Dabooka

Re: Quite ironic

Came across that lot.

Used to spend forever having to tell folk that now you know you can't, you can't! Give it to someone else

Dabooka

Re: Quite ironic

5 downvotes? I wonder why?

Work based first aid provision has been diluted down something rotten over the last 25 years and hardly resembles what used to be taught. Bearing in mind we now have to support and maintain a patient for much much longer than we used to, learning more than the basics condensed into a few hours is actually something that most folk would benefit from.

You can easily be on for four hours plus. Nothing is taught to prepare people for that length of care anymore.

Dabooka
Flame

Quite ironic

As most (UK) workplace first aid quals are also utterly meaningless and as much use as a corduroy ashtray

Experts scoff at UK Lords' suggestion that AI could one day make battlefield decisions

Dabooka

Re: Is it technically possible ?

Or hide under a box

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Dabooka
WTF?

What checks are these?

Border control? Car safety? Banning of chessboards?

Oh, you mean cheques!

Logitech, iFixit to offer parts to stop folks binning their computer mouse

Dabooka
Go

5 years?! Pah!

I'm sat here using my 20 yr old Microsoft Intellimouse Optical.

Given to me by a tech friend at work who could get used to it, it's survived a redundancy, two jobs, a return back to my original employer and about 12 office moves since. It's a lovely faded 'smkoers yellow' and the surface as become shiny through repeated use but otherwise it's good as.

I also quickly Googled it and there's some very optimistic pricing out there for these things used!

Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500m bill

Dabooka

Just what I was going to post

fuck the small guys, but there's your wedge chaps.

And yes I'm aware they'll not see a fraction of it but that's hardly the point. 'Insufficient evidence' gimme a break

Student requested access to research data. And waited. And waited. And then hacked to get root

Dabooka

Re: Not caught either... Or they never caught up with me

I've had that too, except mine was about hydrogen fuel cells or something.

Resulted in pages and pages of DVs. Oh to have the time...!

The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?

Dabooka

Terry Woagn (RIP)

One morning read out a message when asking this very question on his breakfast show.

A listener had order a 'Value' Kettle to take with them to their caravan but found it substituted with a Value iron instead

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

Dabooka

Re: Why would one ...

I agree, this makes little sense

If Tesla Investor Day was about exciting investors then boy did it fail

Dabooka

Re: RE: re-engineering the underlying parts for lower cost

This.

I don't know enough about Tesla components but the comparisons need to remain on point to hold validity. Most moderns are written off for all sorts of things, I guess it's just breakers are able to salvage and reuse parts (depending ion the category of write off of course, at least in the UK) which for whatever reason Tesla can't / won't allow.

The fact is cars are less likely to be killed by rust nowadays than a component failure. It's an issue for all manufacturers going back a number of years although it certainly appears Tesla is worse.

I'm struggling to get one of mine back on the road because of a bloody fuel pump off all things.

It's official: BlackLotus malware can bypass Secure Boot on Windows machines

Dabooka

Someone explain to a novice

I don't know much about the Secure Boot module aside from the lack of it prevents me upgrading an old Thinkpad to Win 11, so can someone explain to me what the word 'Secure' means in this context?

Obviously it means something different entirely

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