
I'll just point out that the Poles were the first to crack the German Enigma.
Well done, guys. Someone has some 'splainin' to do...
2113 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2016
The company I work for is currently all-in on MS metrics. *everything* is measured (for some definition of "measured") and presented ina dashboard. Decisions are made based on the KPIs. AI can only make this more "interesting".
I particularly enjoy the "liklihood of resignation" metric that my manager is required to estimate.
Got my LJ5 for free (some repair required)
New fuser ($150), new drive gears ($30). Upgraded the memory, JetDirect card, new toner cart, and it's working like new.
It's built like a tank and stupid simple to work on. Of course, it's almost 25 years old, but it does what I need, parts and toner are cheap (and pre-DRM).
Of course, it's "Bill and Dave" HP quality, not the current abomination of the same name.
The corporate mothership pushed a Windows update to my (centrally managed) work lappy last weekend. Upon reboot, I was presented with an invitation to log into (I kid you not) Skype for Business.
Even the local IT bod was taken aback. Easily disabled (right in the login box) from starting when Windows boots, but a blast from the past for sure. Teams came up and ran normally.
IIRC (and I may not, because I'm a Boomer), one of the bullet points for Win[9? 10?], was "hey! no more having to load vendor drivers off tiny CDROMs...we have them all on our servers, so Windows will just install the appropriate driver automatically when you plug your new gadget in!"
So...now we're going back to "insert driver disk"? Two steps forward and one back?
Worse yet, HP no longer support the LJ5 with their "generic PCL" driver. Which is sort of the point of a generic driver. Cynical me thinks it's because they can't force "expiration" of the toner. Which is yet another reason I love my LJ5!
And...even though Windows HP supplied driver doesn't support the LJ5, Windows will happily print to the very same LJ5, when it's shared off my Linux Mint system.
Who among us has not done something similar in our careers? I know I have, and at least once have broken something expensive.
From that experience I have developed some rules:
- Work with a buddy...they may spot something you've missed, or ask a good question.
- DO NOT work when tired. Take a break or go home and sleep.
- Obsessive labelling is not a sin
- Do respect others' test setups and give no quarter if they do not respect yours.
- Never assume, always check. Always consult the documentation before trusting your memory
- Take copious notes. Include diagrams.
- Take pictures before taking it apart (my iPhone photo stream has equal amounts of work and personal images)
I believe it was just last week that we had a commentard mention a near-sighted secretary who had a problem with spurious spaces appearing in her documents. The intrepid IT bod noticed that these were caused by her...um...rather impressive attributes interacting with the spacebar as she leaned forward to read the screen.
"Do they even teach that way anymore?"
I asked one of our new hires that exact question. He confirmed that they do...in his Computer Engineering course, they still design and build CPUs and interface them to memory, peripherals, etc and design microcoded instruction sets. Instead of doing it on paper, though, like we did in the 70s, they do them in VHDL or Verilog and implement them in FPGAs.
I was encouraged.
Microsoft thinks I'm far more interested in exploring the "neat new features" of Windows, than I actually am.
Guys, it's an operating system, not a video game. It acts (very crudely) as an interface between the apps I need to run and the PC hardware and "rest of the world". I do not want its help, I do not want to explore it. I just want it to be there and do its job reliably.
And another thing...I can understand upgrades. But they should be incremental improvements, not wholesale new installs. It's an operating system, and if you haven't got it right by now, you never will. You have had many, many years. Windows 10 does everything I need it to do and it seems very reliable and quite easy to use. WTF do I *need* Windows 11? And, more importantly, why do I need to PAY for it? What makes Windows 11 better than Windows 10 (in simple words, please)?
I will admit to being the complainer at one point or another in my life, and when the IT person has either explained what I need to do, or fixed the issue by doing something I could have done myself, I admit my incompetence and promise to do better next time.
Just in case that doesn't work, the IT guy (we're down to one, and corporate has taken all his powers away...he's not happy about that) gets a small token of my thanks every Christmas time. He always says I don't have to do anything for him, and I always say that it never hurts to keep on the good side of IT.
Eh...All the makers of minis and superminis got overtaken by [single and multiple] Pentii. It's not clear that any of the proprietary manufacturers could have done anything to survive the rise of commodity motherboards. Standard, non proprietary hardware (and, later, POSIX) levelled the playing ground, something that DEC and their bretheren couldn't deal with.
My college job was repairing Model 33s that got used in anger.
I had an endless supply of epoxy and 16AWG solid wire, which I used to repair the plastic covers slammed into by undregraduate fists, as they learned how to write code that didn't compile. The transparent window over the typing area was a favourite target
The local IT bod at my place of work always gets a small "something" at Christmas.
He always thanks me, tells me it's not necessary, and I always thank him, reminding him of the calls throughout the year which were "not necessary" (due to my cluelessness). I also tell him it's my policy to keep on the "right side" of IT, lest something unfortunate, involving a roll of carpet, duct tape and quicklime, occur
Work recently proposed "upgrading" me from 10 to 11. I declined. 10 works fine, all my applications software is running fine, why should I court disaster?
Truth be told, I was happy with 7, and 10 seems pretty much the same. I'm sure (hah!) there's much new and improved behind the curtain, but what I have works fine, so I'm in no hurry to tempt the fates.
Besides, I think I'm 1.5 years into a 3 year hardware upgrade cycle...
Hey! They can't do that to us! Only we can do that to us!
IIRC, NSA was grabbing the routers and modifying them as they left Cisco's warehouse. Shipping company or something.
Next time, maybe don't use "Neighbourhood Shipping Associates" to do your worldwide distribution?
// Flowers By Irene
My employer has seen fit to supply me with an HP Zbook laptop, which has the annoying "feature" that it maintains a black screen for an unnervingly long time after you have (maybe) powered it up. More than once, I have turned it off and on again before waiting long enough to get the "HP Wolf Data Security" (whatever that is) it finally deigns to display...
How about a clue that the thing's booting, guys?
Many states, mine included (MA) are "at will" employment, which means they can fire you at any time and don't have to give a reason. You can technically quit at any time, without notice, but you risk having a "no rehire" mark on your file at that company if you do.
Also, most companies make you sign a document at time of hire, restricting your ability to work for competitors or clients for some period of time after you leave. It may or may not be legal, but they'll tie you up in court long enough to make it expensive for you.
Some data missing here...what industry[ies]? What jobs? I can see this happening in manufacturing jobs, but my own experience in a design job (and that of my coworkers) differs from that shown in the graph.
I WFH during the pandemic, but went into the office when hands-on work was necessary. Schematic capture, simulation, document writing, can all be done more efficiently from home (at least in my case), and that was 75% of what I was doing during the pandemic.
I'll point out that most of us did some sort of post-secondary school. In my case, I atteneded lectures and lab sessions in person, but the vast amount of my work was done off-site, including ALL of my output. It worked then, it works now. After 3 years of COVID WFH, where nobody has claimed there were any productivity issues, I see little evidence that mandatory "face time" is necessary for good productivity.
HP supplies are my favourites. I have a couple...rescued and repaired (the manuals have the schematics!).
I have noticed the cheap Chinese supplies display volts and amps, but I'm not sure I trust them completely yet. Certainly, the ones I have seen don't have any current limiting, and an overcurrent shutdown seems more likely than foldback current limiting, but I'm in the market for one, so perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.
I fin dit fascinating that the companies cited in TFA are all software companies. How a software professional is "more productive" when in the office vs at home, is a mystery to me. I can easily see why some jobs are in-office, but software development would seem to me to be about as far towards the "WFH" end of the scale as one could get.