Re: Whether or not astronauts will be aboard has not been decided yet
If someone mentions rare off_earth minerals he may go to claim them.
Posts by Bowlers
87 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jul 2015
Boeing's Starliner may fly again, pending fixes to literally everything
Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently
Microsoft preps big guns to shift Copilot software and PCs
Friday 29th November 2024 15:51 GMT
Is msoft slipping?
I have just powered up my win 10 laptop after 10 days (I'm long retired but come here to see what I might be missing ) I see a taskbar icon for Copilot. It must have arrived in the last patch tuesday and auto installed to the task bar(who knew). But msoft allowed an uninstall, at least until next month.
Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way
Monday 16th September 2024 20:56 GMT
Re: I remember seeing some OLD datacenters
The "realy thick serial cables" were probably mainframe parallel cables, a pair for every channel. Some mainframe DCs wanted a new machine up and running before uninstalling the old one. That meant old cables could be difficult to remove until it became so bad that floor tiles would not sit flat. Then the fun began...WE overtime and squeaky bum time.
Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die
Astroboffins order most advanced spectrograph ever to sniff out alien life
Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble
Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'
Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?
Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically
Monday 11th September 2023 11:42 GMT
Also a long time ago I wanted to plug in a radio. Stuff didn't always come with fitted plugs then and there were none lying around in the barracks so did the normal (for the time) of splitting the two leads and stuffing them in the socket. Unfortunately, being naive/stupid and lucky, I used a pair of narrow nosed pliers to force them in in parallel. Common or Garden black smoke ensued and the wall mounted conduit rattled loud enough to annoy other residents more than the radio would have done. I did learn enough to reach old age with only the odd shock/tingle since.
Tesla knew Autopilot weakness killed a driver – and didn't fix it, engineers claim
Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase
Victims of IT scandal in UK postal service will get fresh compensation
20 years on, physicists are still figuring out anomaly in proton experiment
Oil company Castrol slips and slides into immersion cooling
In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up
NASA will award contract for second lunar lander to a biz that's not SpaceX
Distributor dumps Kaspersky to show solidarity with Ukraine
Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians
'IwlIj jachjaj! Incoming LibreOffice 7.3 to support Klingon and Interslavic
A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'
Say what you see: Four-letter fun on a late-night support call
We have some sad news about Facebook. It has returned to the internet after six-hour mega outage
RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81
Friday 17th September 2021 09:06 GMT
Re: Rest in peace
I remember a guy showing off his self built Sinclair calculator as we walked into the computer room. It threw a wobbly as we crossed the threshold, rather than the mainframes and associated IO causing it we decided it was the large door retaining magnet that caused it. Cool bit of kit at the time though.
Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?
NASA fixes Hubble Space Telescope using backup power supply unit, payload computer
Openreach to UK businesses: Switch is about to hit the fan. Prepare for withdrawal of the copper-based phone network now or risk disruption
Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff
Italian competition watchdog slaps Apple with €10m fine over allegedly misleading iPhone waterproofing claims
For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice
Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah
Considering the colonisation of Mars? Werner Herzog would like a word
Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good
Biden projected to be the next US President, Microsoft joins rest of world in telling Trump: It looks like... you're fired
Sunday 8th November 2020 17:09 GMT
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"Yep. I'm with you, on that education ultimately defines democracies."
There was an idea in an SF novel, by Robert Heinlein IFIRC, where the voters in a democracy could have multiple votes. Everyone would have one basic irrevocable vote but could earn extra ones by achieving a recognised education standard, a period serving in your country's armed forces etc. Misdemeanors or crimes would lose you votes so in theory the most responsible citizens would prevail in elections.
Could never happen of course.
Apple seeks damages from recycling firm that didn't damage its devices: 100,000 iThings 'resold' rather than broken up as expected
There ain't no problem that can't be solved with the help of American horsepower – even yanking on a coax cable
Friday 2nd October 2020 12:35 GMT
The other side to IBM cables.
IBM mainframe parallel channel cables produced different problems to stretching.
A customer site who had been using IBM mainframes since the early seventies had, by the nineties quite a collection of redundent cables under the 2 foot deep floor. They ran 3 or 4 CPUs on the same foor and had over the years changed 4 generations of mainframes, each new installation needed to be up and running before decommissioning the old one. Not all the cables could be reused or removed, so over the years they built up until in places the floor tiles would need careful adjustment (jumping on) to to fit. When Fibre Channel were added to MFs the cables were more delicate making routeing difficult. It was decided to remove all the redundent cables so a few 'no downtime' weekend slots were arranged with the customer for CEs to be onsite for the work.
For the uninitiated in IBM MFs, parallel cables had 2 types, older 360 era as thick as a mans wrist and later 370 ones ladies wrist size (OK some ladies). The connectors on each end were hand size and there were 2 cables per channel, 64 channels per MF (maybe more on later MF I forget).
Our first weekend pulling cables went rather slowly as we were trying to remove the cables for later re-use (they were expensive). Having identified each end one guy pulled and another threaded the connector through the mass of live and dead cables, lifting and replacing floor tiles as we progressed. Having a run of removed tiles alongside of a few tons of MF could be dodgey, stories of collapses on the social media of the day (pub sessions) were whispered. After 9 hours, 8 CE's sweat had produced little result so it was decided for our next attempt we would cut off the connectors to speed up the job and sod the cable expense. Later we had to identify the longer/heavier cables (100-200 feet) and cut near the centre and pull out from each end. After 3 WEs of this and many cables still to go, management decided 9 x 8 x £double time could impact on their bonuses so they recruited cheaper labour, box shifters, delivery drivers etc.
Next WE 2 CEs familiar with the site and 5 or 6 helpers had a familiarision session on floor tile etiquette (don't let anything above ground change position), how to identify the cables we want removed and avoid the old 360 looking but slightly thicker ones as they are Tape CU to Drive etc. What was not emphasised enough was if more than one cable twitches when someone yanks the end do not cut until you're sure it's the right one; equivalent to the measure twice cut once maxim.
The inevitable happend, twice plus a tape drive. In the end we got away lightly from a customer point of view, losing access to a printer and the tape drive and one path to a tape library were recoverable.
And I did earn a few bob that month!
Spain's highway agency is monitoring speeding hotspots using bulk phone location data
Monday 28th September 2020 10:57 GMT
Re: M.L.O.C.
Back in the 70s during one of the fuel shortages the speed limit on motorways was reduced to max 50mph. Travelling north on the M1 the traffic was light ( those were the days eh!), I was in the inside lane doing 50, came up to a big Jag doing 40 to 45 in the middle lane (probably optimum speed for fuel saving in the Jag). Not wanting to undertake I changed lane expecting/hoping he would go to the unoccupied inside lane but he just sailed on. Rather than do the loop to the outside lane and back to the inside I flashed him a couple of times, the third time he pulled into the outside lane allowing me to undertake while moving back to the inside. Spent the next 10 minutes trying to understand his reasoning; he was too lazy to bother? No, Jags don't do inside lanes? Probably, but nowadays it is a Beemer or Audi.
She was praised by the CEO and promoted. After her brother and mom died, she returned from compassionate leave. IBM laid her off
Tuesday 22nd September 2020 08:34 GMT
Re: What the Hell Has Happened to IBM?
I worked for IBM from the early 70s to early 90s as a CE (always felt uncomfortable with engineer in my job title, Brunel would not have approved). We installed, maintained and did the emergency response to the mainframes of many of the major companies in the UK. But we were considered a necessary expense and often felt undervalued, especially when internal documents referred to Sales and System Engineering groups as 'Professionals' and we were just part of Customer Service.
Re-reading the above I may sound a little bitter but I think the IBM of that period was a good company to work for, I only left (redundant at 51) when mainframes were going out of fashion but all I have read of them since seems like a long decline.
Sounds like the black helicopters have come for us. Oh, just another swarm of FAA-approved Amazon delivery drones
Tuesday 1st September 2020 10:25 GMT
30 min delivery!
Is that even possible? A warehouse worker or robot would need to pick the item, package it in a drone friendly way, attach to drone and launch. Say 5min at best so the customer would have to be within 25min range at whatever speed the drone is capable of (or allowed to fly). How many warehouses would be needed even in a smallish country like the UK to make 30min a deliverable option? It will not happen.
Even same day delivery by drone would depend on range so would limit the effectiveness as a service offering. Then there are issues as raised in the Aussie trial plus the local naughty boys seeing our deliveries as manna from heaven etc.
I don't think I will see drones delivering goods in 30min in my lifetime, but I am getting on so may it be a safe bet!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
