Posts by Alligator

Devs sent into security panic by 'feature that was helpful … until it wasn't'

Re: Test translations...

The most famous early machine translation fail was

"Out of sight, out of mind"

becoming

"Invisible idiot"

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

Re: Obligatory quote...

The original quote was, of course:

'A child of five would understand this.'

- 'Send someone to fetch a child of five.'

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

There's a hell of a dropout rate.

...as Matthew later found out.

My keyboard will need drying after that one.

Brit healthcare body rapped for WhatsApp chat sharing patient data

CLITS

The product name for the CLinical Image Transfer System writes itself. Now if only the NHS could find one...

Microsoft scrambles to fix Windows 11 'aCropalypse' privacy-battering bug

Re: aCropalyse

It would help if you and the article's author got the name of the bug right in the first place, though I note that the headline writer, presumably a sub-editor, managed to include the second p.

Microsoft leaves the Office, rebrands everything as 365

They famously formed a focus group to name a car or two and came away with "Ford Focus" and "Ford Ka". I wonder what they thought was wrong with "Groupie"? (random spellings optional).

Google shuts off IoT Core services shortly after announcing API stability commitments

Minor typo

scriptr.oi ??? Oh aye! It's scriptr.io

Dev's code manages to topple Microsoft's mighty SharePoint

Re: Exchange

Microsoft Swear point - a system designed to lose files created in Microsoft Orifice

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

Re: We had a copier engineer once...

British Gas were notorious for incompetent IT back in the day. In the mid-90s I received a bill from them for £0.00 which I duly ignored. That was a mistake. They then send me a red bill for £0.00 which I also duly ignored. Another mistake. This was followed by a court summons and a threat to cut off my gas due to the unpaid bill. Phoning their accounts department did not help as I would sit on hold forever (presumably as they were making money off my call) and then get randomly cut off.

It was finally solved by e-mailing the law firm that was representing them threatening to sue for costs incurred attending the summons and noting that I would charge them my usual 4 figure daily rate. Apologies were never forthcoming but the summons was very quickly withdrawn and threats of cutting off my supply mysteriously evaporated into thin air.

That time a techie accidentally improved an airline's productivity

Re: Two types of workers

You forgot the mathematicians, who were appalled that you didn't spot that the joke was in terary...

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Re: The security system

It may be that the refinery (or chemicals plant) did this by design. BP Baglan Bay and Llandarcy certainly had their own fire brigades on site and routinely locked the gate in case of a fire to stop the idiots from the fire brigade doing something stupid again. This was certainly still the case in Baglan in the early '90s. The fire brigade had got into the plant during an incident in the late '70s (IIRC) which the on site brigade were carefully dealing with, gone hung-ho having not understood why the fire was being dealt with carefully and slowly, and caused an avoidable full shut down of the plant which cost over £1m per hour and lasted a couple of days.

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

Re: I was there

Haven't you read anything about NHS IT?

It's a long running British farce, even more notorious than British Leyland

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

Re: Don't hold back...

The self-referential post. An art form all on it's own.

BOFH: The vengeance bus is coming, and everybody's jumping. An Xmas bonus hits me…

...not to mention the Cabot Cove Serial Killer, Jessica Fletcher.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

May all your Festive support call outs be:

a) trivially solved remotely in 2 minutes flat

and

b) chargeable as overtime with an obscene Christmas rate multiplier in a minimum whole day billing period due to an overlooked clause in your contract.

Newly discovered millipede earns its name by being the first to walk on one thousand legs

Re: 1,306 legs

Which also means that they'd never have exactly 1000 legs.

OK, boomer? Gen-X-ers, elder millennials most likely to name their cars, says DVLA

What?

15 kmph? kmph? What?

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

Prey

Michael Crichton's Prey is their Bible.

They see it as scientific fact or prophetic rather than a very enjoyable if scientifically absurd fiction novel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(novel)

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Re: A little power

If you actually want to choose your own backgrounds rather than the "corporate standard" enforced by BOFH and bginfo just set the bginfo target file in your temp directory to be read only.

BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days

BOFH O'clock

A great start to a Friday... Mine's a Lexus LM!

Go to L: A man of the cloth faces keyboard conundrum

Re: Font recommendations

You've never been Lain?

Michigan Micro Mote works well escargot: Tiny computer makes it into the field strapped to backs of predatory snails

Slow news day?

The post is required, and must contain letters.

BOFH: Rome, I have been thy soldier 40 years... give me a staff of honour for mine age

Re: It's Always....

No, it's Penry, the mild-mannered janitor.

Forget about those pesky closures, Windows 10 has an important message for you

Re: The long, dark teatime of the next few months

Actually, it bears more resemblance to raw milk than pasteurized milk does.

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

Usernames

I used to work in a department where first initial surname was the standard for email addresses. Several ladies fell foul of this when getting married and protested vociferously about their new emails. Mrs Lavery (first initial S) got off lightly, Mrs Laycock (first initial P) was the butt of a lot of bad jokes, but I did feel sorry for Mrs Lapper (first initial S) who took it all very personally and left about 6 months later.

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: Building dust

I had plenty of Engineer's laptops that died of inhaling tiny little bits of swarf from the CNC Lathes and Milling Machines that they were working on. And one that fell into the coolant when the machine vibrated a bit too much and yet bizarrely survived (once dried out).

Before the smoking ban, there was one Engineer whose laptop you could smell a mile off due to the tobacco stink. Fuel station gloves were used to install remote control software onto the machine (no-one wanted to touch that keyboard) and it was put in a remote storecupboard whilst it was updated).

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

Re: Any computer game after 1994...

It looks very pink around here.

Prank 'Give me a raise!' email nearly lands sysadmin with dismissal

Phenolphthalein. A rare word with 5 consecutive consonants, none of which is y.

Also a very effective laxitive.

Microsoft commits: We're buying GitHub for $7.5 beeeeeeellion

Re: Shite

They make a hairdryer now. It blows.

BCC is hard, OK? Quite a lot of orgs blurted your email addresses in GDPR mailouts

It could be that Office 365 is not recognising comma as a valid separator for e-mail lists and is expecting semi-colon. Pegasus however, is happy with comma as an e-mail separator.

Standards!

IBM: About those agreed voluntary redundancies ... we were just kidding

Escape

A friend escaped IBM last Wednesday and is about to go on holiday for a couple of months. He looked and sounded the best he had for a long long time on Wednesday evening.

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

Re: What did people expect to see?

As you think this was section 702 surveillance, your understanding of the memo can be categorised as clueless and your opinion safely ignored.