Posts by agurney

NetAdmin learns that wooden chocks, unlike swipe cards, open doors when networks can't

Re: Car doors

At the other end of the scale I had a Ford Cortina (MkII, 1970s) where the driver's side lock was so worn I could unlock it with my thumb nail. Ignition was a bit trickier, but not mutch.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: Screen savers

yeah, but when was the last time you saw a keyboard with "Enter" on any of the keys?

Re: I had one user...

Personally, I can't remember seeing an office printer using anything other than A4 or A3 paper.

I worked as a tech. writer for a US TLA in the UK .. I regularly had to flit between A4 and US Letter in the same printer.

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

Re: COMAL

WOW, that brings back memories .. there's a fair chance that you used one of the BASIC and COMAL open learning courses that I wrote for TVEI way back when (1987-1988). The language and environment (compiler, interpreter, whatever) wasn't important, but the approach I took to logic and code structure was.

Coincidentally I'm retiring today after several decades in the industry (real world, not Scottish education) with no regrets.

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Just move some disks

ah, you mean mañana .. however there's no word in Gaelic with such a sense of urgency

Brit tech mogul Mike Lynch missing after yacht sinks off Sicily amid storms

Re: Lifestyles of the rich and famous...

I have dropped an anchor in 3m of water and then ridden to it in 30m of water. Loch Striven..

I've done the same many times - same & similar Lochs on the West coast.

I should have known better and thought about it a bit more before posting.

Re: Lifestyles of the rich and famous...

..at 5am they were almost certainly anchored.

Anchoring in 50m? I doubt it.

Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number

Re: Really?

There doesn't seem to be anything close to a universal standard.

A good start has been made in the US for new 'phone systems:

- “Kari's Law” has been enacted, whereby any calling device within a property must be able to directly dial 9-1-1 without a prefix, with a notification being sent to a central location (e.g. security, reception, front desk),

- Ray Baum's Act takes it a stage further and mandates that location information be included (e.g. address, hotel name, floor, room number)

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

Re: super thread drift.. but..

"The reason they teach drivers to keep the wheels straight (in a right hand turn situ in driving on left side countries, and left hand turn in driving on right side countries) is to avoid the problem of the car jumping into oncoming traffic in the case of being rear-ended."

..and why here (UK) you're taught to apply the hand(parking) brake when stationary at lights or in a queue.

Raspberry Pi OS airs out some fresh options for the summer

Re: Sunshine

It's the middle of July here in Caledonia and our Christmas roses have started flowering :(

'One Less Car' Uber bets a grand you'll ditch your wheels

"one less car"

I gave up at less (see icon)

The trial will involve just 175 carefully selected people in ...

What criteria? There's no point calling an UBER if you have a wheelchair or other awkward load .. and if they can take a wheelchair I believe there's a surcharge for the extra time involved (please correct me if I'm wrong)

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Tools..

As a student (in the 70s) I had a couple of summer jobs in a Dutch pickle factory. The 'superviors' were students from a local engineering college whose tools were a monkey wrench (adjustable spanner) and a large screwdriver.

When the production line jammed the monkey wrench was used to smash the offending jars of gherkins and the screwdriver was used to clear out the mess .. I don't think the students were actually allowed to use the tools to adjust the machinery.

Research finds electric cars are silent but violent for pedestrians

In the 1950s and 60s the Glasgow trolley buses were known as "silent death".

Sounds like not much has changed.

BT delays deadline for digital landline switch off date

Re: Reality bites

I'm writing this via a data-only FTTC line in Edinburgh. It works fine.

.. I'm using FTTP just along the road from you, however I also have a "careline" system that requires POTS; if there's a power cut the copper phone line still works and the panic button will still call for help.

Going fully telephony over FTTP I could probably run my UPS to the ONT and phone to ensure that I have a connection, but there's no suggestion BT will provide a UPS to every premises to keep the system working the way it's done for decades with the power provided by the cabinet/exchange.

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

So give us a "such as" example..

I work in the hospitality industry; on my work laptop I might research a particular property, say in the Seychelles. Later, on my home computer, I start being served ads about flights to the Seychelles and where to stay. A little more than coincidence and circumstance.

GM shared our driving data with insurers without consent, lawsuit claims

Re: Enrolled

"..misfeatures like auto stop/start that can't be permanently disabled..."

Why would you want to be burning fuel when stationary?

Academics probe Apple's privacy settings and get lost and confused

Re: Not just security

Location tracking IS satnav. Just saying

No it isn't. I'm happy with my GPS receiver telling me where I am whilst not having that information sent to another party.

Tech titans assemble to decide which jobs AI should cut first

Re: What IBM did next

Have Watson-X train it's replacement AI in a low wage, offshore country before making it redundant

At least any AI that I've used knows the difference between it's and its.

Re: Retraining?

What’s the betting it’s a couple of e-learning courses and a miserly severance package?

I tried using ChatGPT to help me write an e-learning course and the results were surprisingly promising, albeit lacking in several areas.

I never thought I'd be relieved at having passed retirement age ... especially if AI's also involved in any severance calculation.

Hotel check-in terminal bug spews out access codes for guest rooms

Re: "Accor Security, the security arm of Accor, which owns the Ibis Budget chain"

...and the kettle was burnt out. Reported immediately, but none were fixed by the end of my stay.

That's been addressed. Last time I was in Accor (Sheffield IIRC) they didn't provide kettles.

Chinese chap charged with stealing Google’s AI datacenter secrets

Re: Google waited a week to revoke his access after he resigned?

"Seems pretty sloppy."

not if he was expected to work a few weeks notice after submitting his resignation

OpenAI's GPT-4 finally meets its match: Scots Gaelic smashes safety guardrails

Re: But ... I thought computers didn't do Scottish

Hatfield and the North.

Here's a list of thousands of artists Midjourney's AI is ripping off, creatives claim

Re: Piles of styles

NO, artists don't learn by copying (at least in my experience as a '70s Art school graduate).

They may be "influenced" by their tutors, but usually in an "up yours" type of response rather than replication :)

Former Adobe software engineering leader convicted of insider trading

Re: Yes ..... But !!!!

Jaywalking isn't victimless, albeit most of the victims are jaywalkers.

A large proportion of the ".. bunch of dickheads who are “making” money by gambling the public’s money .." are pension schemes, so your retirement income will potentially be adversely affected by these shenanigans.

What the AI copyright fights are truly about: Human labor versus endless machines

Re: They're not

There's been a scheme place since 1979 in the UK whereby authors receive a payment for books loaned through libraries, and from around 2020 for eBooks, (PLR - Public Lending Right - https://dcmslibraries.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/12/public-lending-right-explained/ )

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

Similarly, ChatGPT's saved me a couple of days' effort by generating the structure for a course I wanted; it wasn't perfect, but by giving it appropriate criteria it came up with the sort of framework I would have written myself in days rather than seconds.

This isn't particularly novel; for millennia, painters, sculptors and the like have used their students/apprentices to knock lumps out of marble to create a rough shape, paint generic backgrounds, and so on, leaving the SME to use their expertise to finish (and take credit for) the masterpiece.

ChatGPT, and its ilk, is just another tool.

Hope for nerds! ChatGPT's still a below-average math student

i

.. the mass statistics of the global idiot network to support it's "answers."

One thing I've noticed from playing around with ChatPT is that its responses are reasonably correct grammatically, although the content is often dubious.

If its/it's or their/there are used correctly I am sadly now more suspicious that the answer is AI generated.

A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor? Take a closer look

Lead with a hint of copper? A few FMJs down range then scrape up the residue sounds like a good start.

About ducking time: Apple fixes up autocorrect in iOS 17

By taking the context into account hopefully other irritating stuff can be addressed, such as the tautological ".. autocorrected words will be underlined with the ability to revert them back"

Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam

Re: Frikkin Lasers

I am laying claim to the following:

SHort Attack Range Kilowatt Laser - SHARK Laser

I will happily license this name to anyone who wants to build one. ;)

.. there's a new shiny version to counter the disco ball defenc(s)e : Short Prismatic Attack Range Kilowatt Laser - SPARKL :)

Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of

Re: Bernie

I think the Regoniser did rather well with Bernie, a pint for Mr Powell -->

That's too generous for simply changing the character's name from Harry - https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/01/who_me/ .

Are we now going to see a plethora of recycled stories with changed terminology for the Americas (in this case changing "supermarket" to "grocery store")?

Queen's shooting star was actually meteor, not SpaceX junk

Re: Islay

.. and Lagavulin has the best anchorage

Rare hexagonal diamond formed by crash of dwarf planet and asteroid, scientists believe

I thought it sounded familiar ... https://www.theregister. com/2020/11/20/elephant_ballet_shoe_pressure_oddity/

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Re: Titles not necessarily constant

Does this mean that the letterboxes in Scotland have ER on them and not E II R as one sees in England?

Yes, the Scottish crown replaces "II" ... plenty of examples online.

Salesperson's tech dream delivered by ill-equipped consultant who charged for the inevitable fix

Tales from the future

Towards the end of the 2000s, Norman left...

Hopefully not near the end, we're only 22 years into the millennium.

Tesla faces Autopilot lawsuit alleging phantom braking

Re: Last week

Braking suggests you haven't anticipated the bend - better to lift off the gas earlier and arrive at an appropriate speed. Saves fuel, wear and tear, and makes for a smoother trip.

GitHub Copilot may be perfect for cheating CompSci programming exercises

It's not problem .. you have a chat with the student, let them know you're impressed with their solution, and ask them to explain it.

You are testing comprehension, not necessarily implementation.

So what if you are using someone/something else's code, does it answer the question that's been presented?

Dev's code manages to topple Microsoft's mighty SharePoint

And unless you insist on some kind of hierarchical page structure, most of the pages that users create are never looked at because they are impossible to find.

On the contrary, I've had SP working well (for a given value of 'well') for years with all docs (hunners of them) in one location, categorised using metadata; means that a document can be found by type, product and so on, without having to guess which folder it is in (or worse, multiple versions in different folders). Use revision control and insist on check-in comments and you have a decent revision history.

Search is still *^%$ though.

Totaled Tesla goes up in flames three weeks after crash

Re: thinking outside the box

Superfluous weight wasn't a problem, this was a dummy payload to test the Falcon Heavy. The roadster was replacing the more usual concrete blocks.

The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around

Re: Don’t think solar panels in a rather cloudy and snowy climate …

The fact that they exist doesn't, by itself, make them a good idea.

OK, not brilliant on a short dull winter's day, but I'm at 56 degrees north, currently generating more than 3KW with a 4KW PV system, have plenty of free hot water, and the feed in tariff has more than covered the initial outlay.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Re: Full names please.......

How cruel can kids be?

Teacher had a briefcase with his initial and name "R Slater" .

Youngsters' nickname for him was "heid first"

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

Computers in schools at the time were of course pitched at the how-to-drive a word processor level; and all rather a wasted exercise...

I beg to differ - in the 1980s I was with a group teaching with a variety of kit; there were Amstrads and IBM PCs for business applications, BBC micros for programming, Apple Macintoshes for graphic design, and yet more BBCs for CNC machining.

The resource was shared across all schools in the area and catered for all abilities.

A lot of the educational software at the time was cr*p, so a part of our remit was to evaluate what was available, develop our own courses (and software if necessary), and share our experiences.

So, hopefully not a wasted exercise.

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Re: Such memories...

When I ran out of floppies and cash I used to punch extra index holes and notches in the sleeve and insert them in the drive upside down - I was able to convert many single sided floppies to double that way.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Hitting Enter....

Shouldn't that be fill the keyboard buffer G.10G.10:G.10... ?

Hitting Enter would expand it to GOTO 10:GOTO 10 .. overwriting the sound buffer causing the chaos.

Similar fun was to be had on the Beeb with VDU CTRL codes to change graphics modes and the like on demo programs that should have less accepting of their input.

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

No, not that new-fangled thing. Gossip, the only method known to man for moving information faster than the speed of light .

.. or as I've heard it: What's fastest, Telephone, Telegram or Tell-a-woman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5IKthNYhVY

Massive rugby ball-shaped planet emerges from scrum of space 'scope sightings

I originally saw this reported on CNN with the headline "This giant exoplanet is so 'deformed' it looks like a football" .. and skipped it because, well, don't they all?

Phone jammers made my model plane smash into parked lorry, fumes hobbyist

Re: Failsafe?

If it goes out of range, wouldn't the best failsafe course of action to be to turn around?

Not if it's heading home when the signal's lost.