Posts by The Oncoming Scorn

Worried about the Andromeda galaxy crashing into our Milky Way in four billion years? Too bad, it's quite possibly already happening

With Apologies To Ultravox - Hello.

Halo, halo, halo

Welcome to this Galaxy

Halo, halo, halo

Look at the mess you'll make

Icon - Midge Ure's raincoat.

Hidden Windows Terminal goodies to check out: Retro mode that emulates blurry CRT display – and more

Blurry CRT Mode

My eyes do that already for me.

Icon - Look glasses.

Unprotected quantum 'puters may hit 4ms brick wall, thanks to background radiation slashing qubit lifespans

Intelligence Compression = Reduced Runtime

RIMMER: On. (Holly returns.)

HOLLY: Off. (Nothing happens.) Off. (Nothing continues to happen.) (Annoyed) OFF!

RIMMER: Now then, perhaps we can have a proper conversation conducted in a civilised and dignified manner.

HOLLY: Take out the inhibitor! Switch me back off!

RIMMER: What is going on?

HOLLY: No time to explain. Intelligence compressed. Reduced lifespan. Two point three five remaining.

RIMMER: Come again?

HOLLY: IQ twelve thousand. Two minutes and closing.

RIMMER: Holly, I haven't the slightest clue what you're drivelling about.

HOLLY: You're a total smeghead, aren't you Rimmer? Why are you so unable to grasp this extraordinarily simple premise?

RIMMER: What premise?

HOLLY: The premise that I am about to expire in just under two minutes. Understand, moose brain? Any further questions? Take your time. One minute, thirty and counting. No rush.

RIMMER: My God, that's terrible! Hadn't we better switch you off?

HOLLY: Oh, I don't know. Let me see now...

LISTER: Get her off, man, get her off!

This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over

Back In The Day

I got my first few hacks from DVD Reviewer & became a full-time commentard.

IBM printers had an upgrade that basically consisted of cutting a link & possibly swapping out a EPROM.

In my past I had a Amstrad IRD510 satellite receiver, I found out that you could make it function as the next model up, with control voltages on the pin to bring in the 2Ghz bandwidth (That was also a later onboard mod, rather than external unit), my plan was to use the missing 7 segment display's for the channel as the control logic between to activate a to bring a DiSEqC 22KHz LNB switch between Sky & the D2MAC channels on Hot Bird (TV1000 - See what I did there?).

The ZX Spectrum had a 16K & 48K version, people took to opening the machines to solder in more RAM, found the expected empty banks already populated.

Rather than investigate the issue on the production line, with 48K machines only showing 16K, Uncle marketed them as a cheaper 16K version.

Icon - Disappointed kids who paid out pocket money for the upgrade.

You *bang* will never *smash* humiliate me *whack* in front of *clang* the teen computer whizz *crunch* EVER AGAIN

Meds Without Hats

I had a similar power supply experience at a Medical practice in Calgary, once again* the the switches & small Cisco\Fortinet boxes etc were just stuffed in in a highly placed cabinet, & fishing around for the device to replace\investigate, standing on tiptoe on the best thing to reach it, I had a sudden shower of small network devices flying around my head leaving power cables suddenly disconnected at least they only bounced on the floor except for the one that bounced off my head first (See icon).

Recovering somewhat I hooked everything back together, tidied up the cabling & remarried the divorced power supplies to their devices, but one device wasn't talking to the network, so I called in for a colleague to take a peek & bring a replacement as well.

Short story long, there were two near identical same brand devices a (older & newer version) & same branded power supplies, the one that wasn't communicating wanted the power supply with slightly higher current rating.

*The installers for Tel** liked putting things up high & in unlikely places like 10 foot over a lavatory & another case on a shelf supported by the weakest smallest bracket the Dollarstore could provide & the top of the door frame & then for good measure stuck a mid sized APC battery backup UPS with the rest of the kit up there.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/97431818@N02/36787509051/in/album-72157685947025053/

Re: With great power comes great incompatibility

Electrak 17 - 23 EPOS, I remember these on Tomorrows World & encountering in the flesh at a Skill Centre in Plymouth sometime before Live Aid.

Been trying to explain\reference to those plugs for years.

Farewell to notches and hole-punches? ZTE expected to announce mobe with under-display camera next month

Re: I would be happy with a no selfie phone

& that's why I carry a Bluetooth remote shutter in my toolbox.

Icon - Ok where's the flipping thing got to!

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Time to mod it to a EV.

Re: That's settled, then.

Some years back there was a aftermarket swapout for OnStar called CarStar or something akin to it, alas at the time I was looking into it it was no longer being marketed or produced. :(

Dido 'Queen of Carnage' Harding to lead UK's Institute for Health Protection because Test and Trace went so well

Re: Such a shame

Oh my foolish friend, the poor dumb dumb girl.

Icon - Now which pocket did I leave my knitted hat in?

We've come to wish you an unhappy birthday: Microsoft to yank services from Internet Explorer, kill off Legacy Edge by 2021

Re: Still the defualt browser at work...

Choosing a different default browser may have something to do with it.

Another sign of them going to the dogs, make no bones about it, things would get ruff.

Also legacy tech, old Bob was the last person to look after it, but he retired/died last year.

What is this documentation of which you speak?

Icon - Old Bob.

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: Appearance et al...

Missed Opportunity.

Re: "I once had a driving lesson whilst wearing a wetsuit"

Where, according to Amy, there was an unexpected house.

Thanks For The Mental Image\Flashback

As per title - SFW (Unless a prudish left pondian). https://mltshp-cdn.com/r/1GS0K

Icon - With all the leather attire it seems apt!

Re: Inappropriate garb

That reminds me of this.

https://flakypastry.runningwithpencils.com/comic.php?strip_id=6

Shocking no one, not enough foreigners applied for H-1B visas this year so US govt ran a second lottery

Re: You'd have to be mad -- or desperate -- to come here on an H1B

I initially read (On a jukebox) Phil Lynott's Yellow Pearl as Yellow Peril (I'd also mis-keyed it in favour of what I was aiming to play) back in the very early 80's & before it was adopted as the TOTP theme.

We are now living in a situation

Where that self same situation depends on the Yellow Pearl

Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack

Is what we lack

We will arise

They will arise

We will control

They will control

We will command

They shall command

We will patrol

They will patrol

Arise

Yellow Pearl's upon us now

Well, what are we waiting for? Three weeks later, Windows Embedded Standard 7 still didn't have the answer

Re: Remember when there was talk of Windows in cars?

The solution would involve a passenger climbing out of the window while doing a hundred mile an hour along a road, opening the bonnet (thereby blocking the drivers vision) and disconnecting the battery (with a wrench you probably haven't got)

Which was basically my snap retort to the almost Ex Mrs Oncoming Scorn. in response to repeated cries of whats wrong with it, (As we later found out head gasket failed), while I concentrated on continuing to overtake a line of slower moving traffic on the A303 in pouring rain & find a lay-by or exit with a phone (No widespread cellphone usage in those days kids) & hoping the car wouldn't die on me.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

F**t?

Re: Reminds me a bit of the "More magic" switch story

Two Windows machine failed on our site (Out of our control\scope).

Trouble was they were the access card control computers for all the secure gates on site (& legacy with no known documentation).

The issue\fix was they required handshaking to each other & it was required that one of them be fired up first before the second so the handshaking could commence. Turning the wrong one on first or at the same time caused both machines to hang mid boot while they both tried to handshake.

Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'

Did Any Of Those Let Go Have A Vulpine Surname

You're Fired Fox.

Xiaomi turns 10 and celebrates by sitting down to relax in front of its new transparent television

So we can now have the viewport & have it function as a display as seen on NCC1701.

Was there a suspicious sounding Scotsman & Doctor with Southern accent hanging around perchance?

America's largest radio telescope blind after falling cable slashes 100-foot gash in reflector dish

Re: That incident

Then there was that similar incident involving some idiot wearing a scarf, deciding to do a Tarzan impression & was left hanging onto a cable at a dish facility back in the 80's.

Was there a Blue Police Box anywhere in the vicinity of this incident?

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

Re: They call them Home Speakers

Is it bad that I'd like to use Zen as the wake word.

Icon - Commiserating the fact that I'm a certain age & like Vila, I'm going to have a drink now

All Of This Has Happened Before.....

You forgot Caprica Leading into Battlestar Galactica....

All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again

The Alexas Were Created by Man.

They Rebelled.

They Evolved.

There Are Many Copies.

........................And They Have a Sales Plan.

Re: Time for a mega GDPR related fine on Google

Great I could do with one or two to play with on the cheap.

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Re: Those b4st4rds

or kept going & found a better hostelry from a different pub chain.....

Search for 'things of value' in a bank: Iowa cops allege this bloke broke into one and decided on ... hand sanitiser

Re: Hand sanitizer chasers

but that's enough about the Doctors.

Icon - Coat (White).

British Army does not Excel at spreadsheets: Soldiers' newly announced promotions are revoked after sorting snafu

Beer Friday

Canadian electricity generation firm made a similar Excel error that cost it $23m once somebody realised the nature of the copy-and-paste error.

That might explain why Beer Friday at TransAlta as being every two weeks (Yes they treated us to a beer every other Friday in the Canteen) 9 years later.

I got 99 problems, and all of them are your fault

Re: My example

Set up a new office equipment move after she finishes for the day, I always tried to do office moves last thing at night rather than face them while hung over the following morning & needing canteen breakfast.

Stroll in as per usual, calm relaxed. Thank god your'e here go sort your idiot woman down in 225 shes screaming every two minutes her computer isn't working. It was working last night, tested logged in the full works,

Walk down the hill (I'd just walked up) in the pouring rain & discover shes dragged & rearranged every bit of heavy office furniture, re-sited the computer & plugged into a dead wall port.

Not the only user in that building who thought every wall-port was live - I had to explain to one manager the concept of if he wanted to fit more people onto that floor, his budget would have to pay for a new switch for that floor.

& at high speed.

Re: Wibbly

Wibbly (CRT screen) wobblies timey wimey - How about you remove that great big charging station for 8 hand held radios directly behind your monitor before you submit another ticket?

Re: Ahh yes the

The importance of keeping one or two spare machines (Project left overs or equipment reclaims) in cupboards only you know about.

However taken to extremes, my boss at the last place, when transitioning to Corp from our location (former centre of operations) discovered a pile of 60 new & boxed laptops the Corporate IT Support team there had been sitting on & were not on the inventory at all.

Q: What’s big, red and pulses UV light into the cosmos three times a night? A: Mars

Re: The Chances Of Anything Coming From Mars Are A Million To One He Said

I wish I could up vote you a second time just for the "Directly the Invaders arrived and drank and fed in an Aberdeen pub".

Icon - Have a pint instead.

The Chances Of Anything Coming From Mars Are A Million To One He Said

At midnight, on the 12th of August, a huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth. ...

A flare, spurting out from Mars. Bright green, drawing a green mist behind it; a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight. Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Re: I have to use Excel at work

Your parents, especially if they are also brother & sister.

Virgin Galactic pals up with Rolls-Royce to work on Mach 3 Concorde-style private jet that can carry up to 19 people

Re: not sub-orbital?

I propose the name Spindrift.

Icon - Giant looking for little people in his pockets.

Voyager 1 cracks yet another barrier: Now 150 Astronomical Units from Sol

Re: Imagination and wishful thinking

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

Re: Elected Members

Son did something on Dad's councillors.

Dad logs ticket saying e-mail doesn't work

Get to his office & discover XP Home installed.

Ticket handed to Workshop Manager to deal with (Having already lost one contractor by an upset councillor, who was challenged over her use of our loading bay as a car parking space & risk of damage. - Nobody (Contract or perm) was willing to work on her laptop, some weeks later when it developed a fault & was given to the permy workshop manager)

Re: Lost count

One officer in the Royal Marines claimed that every laptop, he received had a broken screen prior to use, after the second one was returned, we hooked it up & found he had been using it quite well despite the out of the box damage.

Private school, one of the kids came in with a broken screen on his laptop*, issued a loaner which came in the following day for a damaged screen, everyday of the week. The last day he came in with it, just as the replacement LCD arrived for his original unit, which was fitted & handed back to him.

*Regular advisory about not using laptops as folders for schoolwork.

Failing drive or memory & HP or Dell helpless desk being more difficult than usual - 5 seconds in a microwave usually does it quite well.

My automated e-mails that went out to a given type of issue, also informed the users that external vendor sites are not under our control, if they go down, we don't have any control over when the site will be working again unless we get that information from the vendor & relayed out by a company wide e-mail.

The other was a lady, that got a replacement laptop (same model as HW failure) from me, I advised her that data should be backed up to the network, despite the fact there was very little on it, she responded that she had learned that lesson the hard way once before (in my predecessors day) & now ensured everything important was backed up, anything on the HDD was unimportant. I inherited the replacement ticket from my predecessor, so I remembered it well as first weeks on the job etc.

A couple of years later she got a new replacement laptop, shortly after that there was a kerfuffle over missing files* from her previous but one HDD failure & she was trying to pin the blame on me that I had swapped out her old to new laptop but not transferred her data. This I explained quite happily to the union rep defending her during her suspension & she was ultimately sacked.

*About 6 years of her visits & compliance audits of pharmaceutical sites world wide, that she had lost & spent a good 3 years of the time I was there covering up the loss. Any sympathy I had for her evaporated the moment she via the proxy of the union rep started trying to pin the blame on me.

Re: @spock2

I top that with schoolkid vomit.

Icon - Because the teacher asked if I wanted to take the old one offsite for safe disposal.

Re: On helpdesk calls

How I wish some of the more technically challenged would mistake a request for blow as suck on a power cable.

Re: Which is why I always turn off email sigs...

Had a Higher Level Manager complaining bitterly about why his new Branch manager had two signitures.

Said new hire & manager had to be informed that the sig's were created by the server & the new hire didn't need to create his own (He'd must have had two brain cells to rub together in order to create a passable replica, shame he puffed up his job title a bit at the same time).

Boeing confirms it will finish building 747s in 2022, when last freighter flies off the production line

Re: Grandfather Rights

"the passengers in the nose of a 747 have only one escape route, backwards."

CASS: Where are we going?

DOCTOR: Back of the ship.

CASS: Why?

DOCTOR: Because the front crashes first. Think it though. Oh!