Posts by Jacqui

Armed cops ice South London devil dog

inbred mutants

Oddly enough some evidence from various dog clubs suggests that pure bred dogs are more likely to suffer the effects of brain damage due to cancer etc and "go wild without notice".

I have spoken to owners that have been savanged by dogs due to undetected cancers affecting thier blood checmistry/brains and making them attack people/thing with no warning whatsover. The dogs were put down, died in the attempt to kill the owner or died very shortly afterwards while being rushed to the vets.

So, I think "very very" becomes "happens quite a bit with certain breeds".

Jacqui

Back onto the IT angle - I offered to provide the database facilities (software, hardware and support services) to allow the kennel club to track births and deaths (and causes) information (for free!) but they declined.

VMware renders multitasking OSes redundant

Aegis SR10

Been there done that, have the t shirt

'Idiot' pulls cables, downs ISPs at Telecity

Customer service?

This is probably the same prat who when I was helping a client install linux and finding the rack KVM keyboard unusable, found that borrowing a keyboard was going to cost 250+VAT as a "support callout". Thankfully the client told the bod on duty "No thanks" and we then rummaged through the company lockers.

Lo we found a old kB and managed to continue with the install. When the prat saw us using a keyboard he stormed in shouting "where did you get that keybaord from!". Thsi time my client told this idiot to go F**k himself". He stormed off in a rage.

Really great customer service!

Jacqui

El Reg drops in on Bletchley Park

flexowriter paper tape

IMHO punched tape or h-card format would look "olde-worldy"

even though they are both quite modern.

With the geek points that only beardy sandal types would grok 'em.

Jacqui

ICANN cast as online scam enabler

Let me get this straight

A company that is an AS is dealing with criminals but we are told that there is no problem with the AS trust network because we all know and trust each other.

The answer would be to drop this AS until they stop hosting such large volumes of crap.

Jacqui

McKinnon UFO hack 'looked like cyberterrorist attack'

.mil mem leak

Many years ago in the before apache, there was a very simple way to get certain web servers to lose memory - given the small amount of memory you could DOS a system in a matter of minutes.

I was then asked by someone at a .mil email address to prove my assertionby running my perl4 script against his web server. I agreed if he could provide written permission. I never heard from him after that.

These days even if he gave me written permission, I would have to decline.

Jacqui

Upgrade drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the 90s

Jule's Own version of Algol

Why C when Ada was *designed* for this sort of application.

Jacqui

And where is the Countess of Lovelace piccie when you need it.

Small, awkward and looking for love: Delphi for PHP 2.0

SOAP backend

We use a WSDL/SOAP backend and the ability to tie SOAP (mainly CRUD) calls with a web form seems lacking any but the Zend offering.

So, for the mo, I stick with *nix editors and Noteapd++ which meets my most all basic needs - and this product certainly does not meet even my most basic needs.

Jacqui

Best Buy calls copper on unsatisfied shopper

DRG

Being a ~6ft mousy blond, I get 'creep'ed in all of the above stores by some of the PFY sales droids.

Another item of advice, if you go into these stores (alone) DO NOT give your address or phone number when asked - the last two bouts of creepy late night phone calls both occurred shortly after purchases...

Jacqui

Boss puts development team on Craigslist

Cray Research

Stefan, my team leader did the same thing when Cray wiped out the remainder of the EU software development base.

He contacted many of Cray's competitors offering our entire team in the chance we could still keep working together. A couple of nibbles but we all had jobs before folks like IBM woke up to the opportunity :-)

Of course, in thise days we had no problem finding jobs and out of ~30devs and ~8 management in the UK, I don't think anyone did not have a job before the notice period was up.

The funniest bit was the managers (mostly developers or ex-dev themselves) were sent to an 'executive retraining camp' to network with other ex-mungers. A bunch of "over the hill"[0] (>40) MBA's all being told they were effectively unemployable by the consulatncy hired to retrain them. When half of our management told then 'network' they had new job offers in the first two weekly meetings I think the cionsultancy (and the rest of the network) knew they were not dealing with the normal MBA crud...

Also some of the "crusties" there began to realise that everything the retrainers were saying may not have been in ex-managers best interest.

Jacqui

[0] The retrainers had a pretty graph and losts of 'facts's showing that an MBA over 40 was unemployable and they should retrain for a new job.

p.s. I still have a photo collage of the old team hanging on my wall from ~15 years ago.

Of laptops and US border searches

warranty period

When I worked for a US computer manufacturer we used to travel to team meets in the mid-west. Company laptops had only started being xrayed at this time and we noticed that managers making frequent flights had major disk issues. Thier brand new laptops suddenly started to fail at the same time as older issued laptops. This made us BOFH types think outside the box.

After running disk analysis software we determined (we wrote the software to do PM on disk clusters) that the xray machines were fragging the disks.

We had the first few laptops replaced under warranty but after the first ten or so the supplier would no longer provide machines under full warranty - "flight warrany" terms reduced warranty period from two years to six months.

Basically some of the antique luggage hardware at US airports will end up trashing your kit, as cheaper and dirtier sources mean cheaper detectors/displays.

P.s. we tried sending a couple of ROM/EEPROMS through the airports - they were trashed after six months of bi-weekly travel - so your lovely Nikon you take to on that trip to disneyworld is being slighlty trashed every time you go on holiday

IMHO You may as well take a hammer to any electronic equipment in your luggage - the cheap ass holiday destination airport kit will fry it for you anyway.

Codemasters sets legal dogs on file-sharers

GMT0BST

Net apps tend to run on local time zones (DST adjusted).

Phone systems tend not to use DST.

Because of this discrepancy the resulting one hour difference can easily lead to the spooks going after the wrong person.

I do not have the link but do remember reading of a (RIAA?) case that failed

in the US because of this.

Spammers debut FDF spam

Old news

I have been getting these for nearly a month and had |.fdf in assp for just as long. I am shocked that the av folks have taken this long to notice.