Posts by Falmor 46 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2016
I think unless you run a high end care home, you don't make much profit. I know someone who was running a care home but is no being made bankrupt to pay off the debts. Apparently, this isn't that uncommon with 1 in 4 care homes at risk of going under: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/161
I had a user with a DOS machine that wouldn't boot. They admitted to trying to delete a subdirectory. After a few questions about how they'd gone about this, I realised they'd done the following
cd \dir
del *.*
dir
dir showed them what they thought were two files, '.' and '..' so they typed
del .
del ..
Norton Utilities undelete fixed the problem. I still smile whenever I think about it.
It took me a long time to come round to Powershell but it's quite useful being able to pass objects through the pipeline once you get used to it.
The problem with cmd commands is that some of them are built in to cmd.exe. To run those you need to use "cmd /c 'commandyouwanttorun'". Not very elegant but it's worked for me so far.
This brought to mind a very vague memory of a Windows 3.0 tool that allowed you edit the 16 colours available. The problem was people would set all 16 colours to the same colour so you couldn't see anything. Think you had to remove a jumper on the motherboard to reset things but I may be mis-remembering, it was a long time ago.
Share permissions often seem to be left at full permissions for everyone but NTFS folder permissions are usually set correctly (not always though). That does mean the files are properly protected but anyone could remove the share (or change it's permissions) and thereby block access.
Sounds a bit like what ever it is in Windows 10 that restarts any apps that were active when you shutdown or reboot. Feels like I have to disable this after every windows update.
Nice to see Microsoft still using stdout redirection with "> c:\users\edgelogfile.txt" rather than the more verbose "| out-file c:\users\edgelogfile.txt".
The driver was signed with a certificate from a Symantec owned company, not Microsoft. The driver has been updated by Gigabyte to remove the exploited flaw. Presumably revoking the certificate will stop machines working that haven't been updated. If the certificate is revoked, the original Sophos article points out that there a plenty of other signed drivers that could be used.
In the 90s, I once had a call from someone who couldn't get their PC to boot. A few questions revealed that they'd deleted a sub-directory from the root using something like the following commands:
C:\> cd subdir
c:\subdir> del *.*
Are you sure (Y/N)? y
c:\subdir> dir
Volume in drive C is DOS
Volume Serial Number is D4F6-F60C
Directory of c:\subdir
24/12/199? 09:27 <DIR> .
24/12/199? 09:27 <DIR> ..
0 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 779,776 bytes free
c:\subdir> del .
Are you sure (Y/N)? y
c:\subdir> del ..
Are you sure (Y/N)? y
Still makes me smile.
In the 90s, I saw this sort of thing so can believe this is true. Once CDs became established, I also had someone write on the silver side of a CD with a ball point, ripping the surface and making the CD unusable. Working a materials science lab, they'd sputter coated the CD but couldn't understand why the data hadn't been restored.
I used to work at a site that had a lot of mathematical modellers. One of the Cray Supercomputer models we used was just the right height for a raised elbow. The designers hadn't considered this but did consider the perfect place for an emergency stop button was on the top of the box. We put a plastic cover over ours so no one ever accidentally shut the thing down. Seeing this a Cray engineer tells he'd been to a site that had used half a coconut shell for the cover.
Not everything works in a Powershell console. Legacy Perl scripts are the only thing I can remember at the moment but there are others. Biggest improvement to CMD has been allowing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to cut and paste. Not having to reach for the mouse to paste when you're typing is so much better. If I could remap Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to Alt-W/Ctrl-Y for the whole of Windows, I wouldn't then keep pressing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in Emacs.
