Posts by Prst. V.Jeltz

How to destroy expensive test kit: What does that button do?

Anyone got any suggestions what the purpose of the "Pre wet" button might be , aside from ruining test equipment?

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

say whatnow? !!!

This is just like Father Christmas all over again :(

true dat .

It sounds like one of those "truly fucked up over time to mean the exact opposite" sayings such as "I could care less" (which really grinds my gears) but it looks like Sherlock homes said it that way from the start.

Embarrassing for a man of with such legendary logic skills.

Re: Hey Rob!

I've push started a Cortina solo.

less chance of that toppling on top of me though.

"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

I've never liked that expression. It barely makes any sense.

When you've eliminated the impossible , theres a boatload of possible things remaining so you're no nearer your answer.

I usually start my diagnostic procedures by writing off the impossible from the start.

Maybe if I eliminate everything thats possible I'll go back and start looking at the impossible , but usually the answer presents itself well before all possible solutions have been exhausted.

Its no surprise Dirk Gently was a fan of this method , given his predilection for creative invoicing.

Re: Hey Rob!

Ive done same. my Supra used to crank for a lot longer than i thought was necessary before starting , and after trying a variety of things , new crank position sensor included , it turned out the starter was worn and was cranking too slowly!

Not slowly enough for me to notice , but slowly enough to confuse the ecu!

Re: Hands On (and Eyes On Too)

I've recently upgraded to 1.1.0

Now uses piggy back device to enhance functionality

SpecSavers did it.

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

brilliant

as always.

some excellent turns of phrase in this one:

"5G?" the PFY asks – at which point I feel the urge to object that he's leading the witness.

OK. So Big Data's manufacturing these nanobots which are very tiny. And what, they distribute them to all the vaccine companies for inclusion in their vaccines? Or do they just do it at the doctor level?

I fear we may be drifting into the PFY's own personal minefield of paranoia. However, it's important to push forward.

I'd love to have this conversation with one of these loonies, although i fear patience would wear thin fairly quickly

Crypto for cryptographers! Infosec types revolt against use of ancient abbreviation by Bitcoin and NFT devotees

Re: how about "Cryptography means Cryptography"?

" and secure by use of public key cryptography (hence why it can use crypto in its name in my opinion"

Yeah but hundreds of things use cryptography and we dont prefix them with crypto everytime theyre mentioned

China to crush secondary market providing forbidden gaming accounts to kids

Re: been there

my dad took the rotor arm out of my cars distributor

didnt work - the one in my mums car fitted just right

while a bit misguided what Beijing is doing sounds well intentioned.

Cant wait to get my dictatorship.

I wish that Kim Jung bloke would let me have a go on his.

*although I realise "letting someone else have a go" is breaking rule #1 in Dictatorship101

been there

My dad imposed similar rules on the old 8bit back in about '83

1 hour every other day!

It didnt really work

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Re: "Less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries are recycled today"

phones and other electronic gadgets where the battery has to have a particular shape and size to fit inside

what? rectangular?

I dont see why that cant be standardised

Re: "Less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries are recycled today"

here's a separate slot for coin cells

at the tip?

I find it incredibly difficult to recycle because whiout exception the staff will find a problem with the stuff i want to recycle , or the vehicle im trying to do it in.

Usually under the banner of "Trade waste! cant dump that"

and yet domestic Joe can bring his people carrier EVERY week, chock full of last weeks brand new ikea shit , dump it , and head off to ikea to buy new shit .

I turn up every couple of years with waste oil from 3 or 4 car oil changes and suddenly i'm some kind of commercial waste charge avoiding fly tipping criminal !

Re: "Less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries are recycled today"

maybe there should be laws / industry standards for a variety of sizes of battery , all uniform and easy to recycle.

kinda like the old aa, aaa , d-cell whatever system

Its a bit silly at the moment that all the power tools compaines have different shaped batterires.

Fatal Attraction: Lovely collection, really, but it does not belong anywhere near magnetic storage media

Re: 3T magnets

good advice , tnx

Re: 3T magnets

having done a fair bit of welding cutting grinding etc ,

I'd be worried i have some "unauthorised" metallic implants

Spolier alert!

Thanks for the massive spoiler in the thumbnail on the front screen el Reg!

At least I made the connection quicker than the two desktop engineers

(although i admit thats a little like watching 'You've been framed' thinking "this'll go wrong" )

Things that are not PogChamp: Amazon's Twitch has its source code, streamer payout data leaked

All i want to know is ...

How much does Richard Herring earn on twitch?

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Re: A little power

cos i dont trust it to turn the light out when i close the lid

I have the same problem with the fridge

Re: A little power

The laptop should be named after the tag,

people who give ,e.g, science dept computers hostnames like "IsaacNewton" are asking for trouble.

so a Echo %computername% or at a push a win+pause will sort you out.

Its be worse if the tag was visible when laptop open , because then when working normally - on a docking station with real screens you'd have to open it , and it would freak out when you closed it again.

...dont get me started on tagging mobile phones.

I was thinking " dont really have these problems now we're working from home"

Then read the description of the Mission Control / Bond Lair equipment and got jealous ....

I would drive 100 miles and I would drive 100 more just to be the man that drove 200 miles to... hit the enter key

Re: Taken literally

I'm gonna start putting backspaces and arrows into peoples passwords

"Hi , yes your new password is Idiom123 , left , left , left ,backspace t"

Re: cyber cafes

WTF? Cyber cafes stopped being a thing ~20 years ago.

yeah ok pedant , bad example :)

how about

Shared student house

Office computer

University Library

community Library

yo mommas computer

or are you suggesting there is no need to log out of things anymore ?

are you sure (y/n)

This whole story is basically a version of when we turn away from one machine (patient) assuming it can get on with progressing some kind of repair based progress bar only to come back after the estimated time to see that it popped up a "are you sure" or other stupid question.

The absolute WORST example ive seen recently is the "log out" button on banking websites.

Whats the greater risk?

a) The user has pressed log out and that wasnt what they wanted to do , neccessitating an "are you sure?"

b) The customer presses log out and fucks off , leaving the machine unattended in the cyber cafe for the hovering shoulder surfer to pounce on a subbornly NOT logged out Machine!

it beggers belief.

i cant imaginr how much money is being stolen this way.

I'm looking at YOU Santander!

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we should feel fine

We've fixed the problems. Not all of them, but the standards are settled, the memory and compute are more than adequate, the graphics as good as our eyes, and the software does what it's told. Like the dog chasing the car, now we've caught up and we're puzzled about what to do next.

Well , looks like we've finished!

hurrah , everyone can have the afternoons off now

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

Re: application launcher

they want to use their applications that run on Windows.

um, how are you goingto use those on your I.T. supported Linux?

was about to post same .

the huge advantage a pc has over a smart phone is a big scree n and mouse abd keyboard to navigate with , and they want to cripple the pc via the menu, to take that functionality away!!

like the article says they tried that in W8 - fking disaster

why do it agian??

Re: Widgets!

trouble is with customising all that shit is , you have to do it on multiople computers ,

then one one needs a rebuild , then you get a new one ,

or you borrow someones pc , or go to it to fix it

then they change the fking OS again ..

i just dont bother customising or id be continually doing it

its not all bad

best thing about current W10 start menu:

you can search it just by typing and avoid havid to look / navigate its hideousness

worst thing:

its entirely fucking random wether you will be able to "attach to start menu" any given shortcut or file

Re: Loss of the ability.....

Hands off my peanuts!

Re: Windows 2000

start menu wise , yes i agree

i dont care about the OS.

I've got visual studio and SSMS into the start menu , the multitude of comms apps we have to use into startup folder

dont need much else

when i do i use keyboard shorcuts or search the start menu to avoid having to navigate it

Re: Soorry, no

yes , i was really delieghted when the task bar , both at home and at work decided to start broadcasting news and weather at me a couple of weeks ago.

its especially great when it produces a massive empty grey rectangle that covers the screen and wont move or go away until its decided what the temperature is at wherever it thinks i am.

Never Knowingly Underborked: Double trouble at Southampton's John Lewis

" chaff system, which was running on Win95."

you have to be shitting me?

If it had to be Microsoft I'd rather run it on Dos 6 , loads quicker and a hell of a lot less to go wrong : )

Breaking Bad or just a bad breakpoint? That feeling when your predecessor is BASIC

Re: The problem

Who said they were two different statements?

both tales might be those months.

just expressed two different ways... which is inconsistent and annoying

stick to yyymmdd !

deploying

Checking the option would ensure the outputted binary was compatible with its predecessors.

Stuff like that is exactly what they never teach you in any kind of coding class .

You learn in a compiler or dev environment , see some output , learn the language , then .... class dismissed!

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac

Re: That's a relief

Exactly.

I dont want to come over all "Bill gates" with his' 640k is enough for anyone' gaff

but by now surely we have enough!

So much computing power we invent bitcoin to for it to pointlessly slave over.

In the '80s, satellite comms showed promise – soon it'll be a viable means to punt internet services at anyone anywhere

parasites

With traffic traversing thousands of miles under the sea, rather than tens of thousands of miles up to a satellite and back

The majority of satellites orbiting the Earth do so at altitudes between 160 and 2,000 kilometers.

So its about the same distance isnt it?

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Re: help?

My scripts dont need a /help or a /? because if you havent put the right parameters in the help comes up rather than an attempt at execution.

I try to think of all the things a user might do wrong , but i dont think i'd have seen this one coming.

what would you have had him put in his get-help section?

"not for porn sites" ?

Roger Waters tells Facebook CEO to Zuck off after 'huge' song rights request

Re: Noddy Holder

I remeber my Dad saying that , in the early 80s sometime.

I'd imagine whatever tax benefit there was has long since been stripped away.

Re: Not Now John

I was/am struggling to imagine what the angle would be using that song in "promotional material" for instagram

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

Solution

Solution - bin all of that stuff and replace with laptop kept behind the tv

my gf has a "sound bar" that absoluelty cant be operated without the flimsy remote.

I'd warn you about the brand but i forget it ...

Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

Re: Carbon neutral

"Ice cars can be serviced by the owner reducing service costs to merely parts and tools."

well , thats a policy decision for the "right to repair" folk to battle out.

nothing to do with wether the vehicle is electric or not.

Re: Carbon neutral

Dave

"You clearly know nothing about maintaining cars"

I know an awful lot about maintainnig cars ,

I have more time underneath a car than anyone here im willng to bet.

And i agree with that other guy

The work is in the engine, as is the maintenionace

Re: Carbon neutral

"You do know that starting an engine is where the bulk of the wear occurs, right?"

People have always said that , I'm beginning doubt it .

A cold engine maybe.

A warm one stopped for 20 seconds at the traffic lights , effect on wear: less than negligble

Re: Carbon neutral

In the UK at least, this has been standard on any fuel injected car since at least the '90s

True dat , I have 1990 Supra and the Air/fuel mix gauge i fitted because of the horrendous mpg it gets , shows no fuel being used when coasting in gear

Apple is happy to diss the desktop – it knows who's got the most to lose

Re: "Apple is, after all, the professional’s platform"

Apple is for the people who work on making things look good

yeah , but its still a mystery to me why.

its not like a mac does anything a windows machine cant do.

in 1993 yes , but times have moved on a little since then.

The only thing about the situatution thats the same is the price differential.