Posts by MrBanana 787 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2017
The fuse protects the cable because copper was in short supply after the war, and a lot of rebuilding had to be done. So the ring main was conceived - a way of feeding high current to a single socket via two low capacity wires. A fuse after the socket, in the plug, was required to prevent overload of the ring.
I took this an extra mile. It was Xenix, not DOS, but equally amenable to key swap shenanigans. Especially as you could remap keys in individual applications so the pesky A and S keys become logically swapped. But then, you actually physically swap the key caps on some poor bastard's keyboard. So some stuff works and some stuff doesn't - depending on when I cared to swap the key maps, which could be done remotely. This became even more hilarious as the "obvious hardware issue" causing his switched key issues got no better when the modified keyboard was swapped out with a regular one. I laughed for a couple of days until beer O'clock Friday lunch time, before we told him.
"What's so special about a plane? It's not that different to other vehicles."
A car, or a bus, could be a mobile bomb, more so than the threat of an abandoned bag, or a waste bin full of Semtex. But I don't think it has happened yet. Planes being used as missiles, definitely been done before.
Also, Harris stated that she would go with the same policies that Biden was running on. The Democrats bet the farm on being the incumbent. Not once, by continuing to endorse a very clearly (f)ailing president, but the doubling down on a hastily prepared candidate seeking the same, flawed mandate. 100 days is nowhere near long enough to mount a presidential campaign if your vice presidency was (at best) undistinguished, and following a "nothing changes" mantra only makes it worse. The democrats should have sidelined Biden after the mid terms and found a candidate that could be different, and better prepared to face Trump. Harris was unlikely to be that person, but at least she was able to walk and talk in a straight line without farting.
It can happen. A friend of mine was in a family business which had a decent portfolio of small companies - import/export, plant hire, wholesale chain management, bulk storage, etc. But they were structured together in such a way that when one small part of the organisation started struggling, no mater how strong the rest were, it brought down the whole lot.
"Others noted the costs for dredging canals to get a reasonable depth and for a ship capable of transporting a barge across the Gulf of Mexico."
The Gulf of Mexico - where's that?
But I guess if Trump can redefine its name, then he can just as easily sign an executive order to redefine its depth.
It's a dumb thing to send an email "Subject: Here's my CV" from a work account. I know someone who did. But you absolutely must then check that To: address. Sending it to recruitment.co,uk may look OK. But did you see the comma there? I bet you noticed the email bounce from "recruitment.co" and then realised that the "uk" part of the mangled address has gone to the company email alias that is everyone in the UK. At least your CV was all ready to go.
Too many conversations with Informix 4GL customers along the lines of....
"You just need to change this statement in the SQL code to fix it."
"Oh, great. How do I find that line in the P-code file, and then recompile it?. That's all we have. No documentation or functional specification".
"Err nope. if all you have is the P-code. Then that's already compiled. You're screwed. Please stay on the line for one of our mental health advisers".
What are you saying, haven't Microsoft embraced the Open Document Format? It's true they stuffed the standards committee with stooges so that they could get through their demands for opaque binary blobs, and their actual implementation of the Open Document Standard is sketchy at best. But MS Word will open a .odt just fine... And then proceed to corrupt its contents.
I don't bother locking my Jaag. The pain of having to replace the mess a thief would make of physical entry, and then bypassing the steering lock and immobiliser is just too much. The anti-theft device is the 6.0L V12 engine. It will have overheated or run out of petrol within 15 miles of being stolen.
The Dutch BSN is no different to a US Social Security Number, or a UK National Insurance number. It is linked to your medical records, so you can (if you choose) get healthcare that can communicate across different parts of you treatment plan. It is linked to your banking records so that you can make a one off payment through iDeal without have to actually hand out your bank or credit card details. It is linked to your employment records. It is linked to your tax records. When the average citizen files their yearly taxes, most of the fields in the form are pre-filled with data from your bank, mortgage, employer etc. Sure, having a single point of attack is problematic for all these services - as it always will be when a single ID number is used for everything. But there are mitigations in place to minimise risk of identify theft.
Do I bag a grocer's apostrophe ?
You need to wait until the 15th - International Apostrophe Day
That is not true in the Netherlands. Non government entities can use DigiD for authentication. EG my insurance company, and medical health providers. The important thing is that they use it for ID verification only. No personal data from any government records are transferred to that entity.
Google street view and satellite images are hugely useful when buying a house. One place I looked at was very good value, then I looked at the satellite image. Called estate agent - "there looks to be a open sewage treatment plant right next door", reply was "oh yes, but you can't see it".
I was selling a small one bed place, and had an interested buyer who wanted to get a survey. I wasn't there for the survey, and surprised at the list of demands that the prospective owner made after reading it. The surveyor had clearly used a boilerplate response and taken less than 5 minutes to fill it in. "No ventilation in the bathroom" - open the window. "No door on the kitchen" - physically impossible because of the location of the stairs. "No boiler certificate" - this was especially hilarious. The house has no gas, just an immersion heater for water, and night storage heaters. We told the purchaser that there was nothing much we could do to fix these imaginary problems.
Firstly, I am not a parent, this is just what I have observed over years of family interaction with people who are.
We were average middle class. There was some money to buy things, but not enough to buy the big desirable stuff. That was out of reach. Can I have my own TV - no. Can I get a 10 speed bike - no. Can we get a VCR - no. Can I have a hamster - no. Can I get a new sister - . But you just have to shrug and move on. What you do get is an understanding of the cost of things, and responsibility looking after them. For all the kids like me from that era, who are parents now, they remember that experience, and say they never want their children to be disadvantaged like they were. Disposable income, the range of stuff to buy for kids, and parental indulgence coupled with pester power has increased hugely since then. I never got that Scalextric set, but every child I know now, has a PlayStation, and a tablet, and a phone, etc. Sure, if you can, give your kids the things you didn't have, but teach responsibility or take it away.
I would much prefer to buy an old car, with high millage and one previous owner, than a newer, low millage car with many owners. Especially if those sales have gone through multiple dealers, with all of them putting a "millage cannot be guaranteed" sticker on the speedometer.
You seem to be arguing yourself into a contradiction. You don't want a single point of failure, but you also don't want to share anything? I use KeePassXC, which uses an encrypted, local file store. Something I can securely share amongst my devices, as I see fit.
In small amateur groups, it isn't just the financial control. Every decision, no matter how trivial, becomes personal politics. I've given up on a target shooting club and an am-dram group because of the petty, internal bickering. I don't need another 2 hour meeting to discuss why only Brian has sole control over the 2 keys for the shed.
For server naming, you either choose something random but memorable like "yogi", "booboo" or something locationally and platform descriptive like CA-AIX_04. Which is fine until you have to move your data centre to Alaska.
For shell sessions, I set the prompt colour (zsh helps here) - Red for root, blue for application users, green for personal stuff, magenta for anything else. Fortunately I'm not red/green colourblind.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
