Posts by Dewlap

Trump admin's purge of US cyber advisory boards was 'foolish,' says ex-Navy admiral

Re: So Putin's presidential candidate

It's become increasingly obvious that most of the XOs are for show - to appeal to the base, to make the "libs" scream and pull hair because their buttons have been pushed, and to overload the media with click-bait headline material so that they ignore the really important things going on.

Right now, the things being done by President Elon, mostly out of sight, are what's really important. Implementing an Orban-style coup by taking control of funding and the personnel system. Taking the power of the purse away from Congress would have provoked immediate action in the past. Same for claiming to have shut down an independent agency that operates under Congressional authority (USAID). Today - the Dems are still in shock from the election, and the GOP isn't lifting a finger to stop it. The unitary presidency is being created before our eyes.

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

Re: Good old days

It must have been about 35 years ago. Back when you downloaded Slackware onto 3.5" floppies and the kernel was the 0.9 release. I was supporting Windows 3.1 users, but was trying to learn what I could about Linux, Unixware, and Solaris X86 (liked that one) to see if they could help us, or at least me.

A handful of users needed to access a Unix box remotely, so I re-partitioned their hard drives. Installed Windows and Slackware, showed then how to set the active partition so they could dual boot. And, learned enough about X11 to give them Xservers (I don't really care for X windows server/client usage either).

A little bit Rube Goldberg, but you do what you have to do when you don't have the budget to buy actual X11 terminals. It worked for them.

Techie called out to customer ASAP, then: Do nothing

Re: Sounds like the same contract people where working at last weeks on call

I experienced exactly this sort of thing back in the day. Our side of the house ran Novell NetWare on Compaq Proliant hardware. NetWare never had any problems, and I made sure we ordered spare parts (hard drives and PSUs) whenever we ordered new servers. When I spec'd the servers, I included 4-hour response and wouldn't allow procurement to make any changes to what I ordered. So, we had the spares, and the experience, and were able to hot swap whenever a drive or PSU failed. If we couldn't handle it, we called the 800 number to get a tech out.

For some reason the suits - without talking to us of course - decided they needed to contract with local company to provide support. We had no input on the proposal or reviewing the bids. Being a government agency, low bid got the contract. The person assigned to respond was picked because they were closest. He was Microsoft certified but had no Novell training and knew nothing about hardware. The only thing he could do was show up - then either he would call the 800 number, or wait for someone else from his company to show up.

The company wanted to take all of our spares and move them to their location, which would have required someone going to that location to retrieve the part. I said HELL NO to that.

We tried it once - with predictable results. After that we just ignored it and fixed it ourselves, or called Compaq support ourselves. The suits did finally realize how stupid it was and at least didn't renew the contract, which caused the company president to start crying because they were a very small, new, company and really needed the contract to stay in business.

Ooh, an update. Let's install it. What could possibly go wro-

I once performed a factory reset on The IT Gods

Very long ago, when HP printers were starting to get network interfaces, I was using an HP tool that could configure printers remotely. The list of printers was for the entire organization. As I was scrolling through, I ran across a printer called The IT Gods. That seemed a little presumptious to me, so I selected The IT Gods and clicked the factory reset button. The IT Gods vanaished, never to reappear.

He was a skater boy. We said, 'see you later, boy' – and the VAX machine mysteriously began to work as intended

Re: Static

My very first was a Sinclair ZX-81. I bought the kit, but was sent the UK version. The replacement was assembled. Next, a TI-99/4A. The first Intel based was a knock-off of the Compaq "portable" - 5" green screen monitor, 640KB RAM, 2 5.25" full-height floppy drives with a full size controller card. I eventually upgraded it with a Hayes 1200B, a full size MFM controller, and a 20MB hard drive.

So, what's happening with LOHAN? Sweet FAA, that's what

LDRS

Maybe you should try to launch at LDRS next year.

https://ldrs35.wordpress.com/