Re: 1,000,000 to 1
As any fule know, million to one chances happen nine times out of ten....
….GNU TP (closest I can get to a Sam Vimes icon)
Posts by OssianScotland
483 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2018
Japan's mission to mine Mars' moon is cleared – now they've filled out the right paperwork on alien world contamination
What's that? Uber isn't actually worth $82bn? Reverse-gear IPO shows the gig (economy) is up
Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet
Saturday 11th May 2019 10:29 GMT
Re: So it wasn't his job
Ah yes - informal support. Normally followed by a lifetime of supporting the damn device on the grounds you were once within a metre of it, so must be responsible. I once had a phone call along the lines of "You remember that computer you fixed... well, I've replaced it, and that's not working, so when are you going to come out?"
Answers (on the theme of "When hell freezes over" on a postcard please....
A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi
Cali Right-to-Repair law dropped, cracks screen, has to be taken to authorized repair shop
'Lightweight' UPS-style flywheels to power naval laser zappers
Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly
Canadian woman fined for not holding escalator handrail finally reaches the top after 10 years
May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'
Wednesday 1st May 2019 18:01 GMT 
Torydammerung?
Didn't Goering also get sacked just before Hitler's death?
May seems to be determined to do a reprise of Downfall - you can almost see her in her bunker under Downing Street ordering imaginary divisions to defend her, and this ridding herself of potential opponents is definitely part of the script. With a little bit of luck, we will be rid of her very soon (although putting all 650 of the buggers up against the wall seems like a very good idea - just to make sure)
icon for obvious reasons
Take a hike: Grab a flask of tea – South Korea is opening hiking trails in the DMZ
Russian-trained spy whale spooks Norwegian fishermen
BOFH: It's not just an awesome app, it'll look great on my Insta. . a. a. AAAARRRRRGGH
Jocasta? Jocasta! Don't ram that trolley into the man: New tech promises an end to this scenario
Saturday 27th April 2019 16:50 GMT
Re: Mattress Land Grab
The dog will sleep in the middle of the bed - you will both fall out
Also (based on a collie I once had), he or she will sneak under the covers from the bottom end so if you don't fall out, you will wake up with a damp nose on the pillow beside you, and memories of some VERY strange dreams.
Welcome your new ancestor to the Homo family tree; boffins have discovered a new tiny species of human
What's long, hard, and full of seamen? The US Navy's latest cybersecurity war gaming classes
Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue
Patch blues-day: Microsoft yanks code after some PCs are rendered super secure (and unbootable) following update
User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?
Friday 12th April 2019 08:10 GMT
More urban myths busted
As a teacher in the late 90's (before I escaped into IT training), I once failed to prevent a pupil doing on screen spelling correction with Typpex.
In Scotland, there is a group of 16-year-old pupils known as "Christmas Leavers", who are too young to leave in summer and must endure (and make the staff suffer) until Christmas. You can guess the motivation levels of these children. I had a large class, most of whom wanted to take Cooking, but it was full and Computing was next to it on the choice form, taking basic Word Processing (Win 3.x / Word 6 days).
One child, who I would say was thick as two short planks except that I am being totally unfair... to timber... had obviously been told (by an English teacher) that spelling mistakes should be typpexed out and the correction written in neatly and separately (by me) that a squiggly red underline on screen meant a spelling mistake. The rest, as they say, is history.
Thankfully this was in the days of CRT monitors, so a razor blade removed the evidence.
So you've 'seen' the black hole. Now for the interesting bit – how all that raw data was stored
Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion
MoD plonks down £2m on table in exchange for anti-drone tech ideas
Edinburgh-based rocket botherer seeks UK or overseas launch location for fun times, maybe more
Microsoft's corporate veep for enterprise puts the boot into boot times
Return of the Glassholes? Relax: Huawei's 'smart specs' aren't Google Glass 2.0
Facebook's at it again: Internal emails show it knew about Cambridge Analytica abuse 'months' before news broke
Russian sailors maroon themselves in Bristol Channel after drunken dinghy ride goes awry
O2 brings forth a Friday fail for some unlucky UK customers
Ransomware drops the Lillehammer on Norsk Hydro: Aluminium giant forced into manual mode after systems scrambled
Yes! Pack your bags! Blossoming planetary system strikingly similar to ours found by boffins
Saturday 16th March 2019 08:05 GMT
Re: Faster than light not needed?
One of his juvenile novels (cant remember which one and too lazy to walk to the bookcases) is all about STL interstellar travel, plus some sort of telepathy between twins and - eventually - other relatives.
"Time for the Stars" says a small voice in the corner of my mind
Brit prisoners to be kept on the straight and narrow with JavaScript and CSS
FBI warns of SIM-swap scams, IBM finds holes in visitor software, 13-year-old girl charged over JavaScript prank...
Tuesday 12th March 2019 09:22 GMT
Re: Caution.
I heartily agree with all of the above. My Pippin (not a rescue dog - I got him as a pup) is now nearly 5, a Bearded Collie who has the best temperament of any dog I have had. He is always there for you, tripping over my feet quite often, but happy to lie snuggled beside me when I am working at home, and even happier to go on a nice long walk (sometimes with protesting children in tow) or to respond to the magic word "Treats". His only vice is that when I am typing, and he feels I am not giving him enough attention, is that he sticks his nose under my elbow and nudges, causing the keyboard to go slightly haywire....
He can sense my emotions and if I am feeling a bit gloomy, all I have to do is to sit on the floor and he will come over, flop mostly on my lap (he's a large dog) and give me a quick lick. My wife (correctly) says I love the dog more than her.
I hope he has many long years left, and I know I will be devastated when he goes.
Civil servants 'Sir Humphrey' their way through grilling on UK.gov's digital transformation
Tuesday 5th March 2019 20:16 GMT
Re: Let's make one thing clear
My parents (both fairly senior Civil Servants (the Bernard level, not up to Sir Humphrey) used to listen to Yes Minister on the radio and on at least one occasion were heard to say "now how on earth did they find out about THAT?"
Ever since then, I felt the whole show was more of a documentary than a fictional comedy.
Deton-8. Blastobox-3. Demo-1... One of these is the name of a SpaceX crew capsule test now due to launch in March
I am just a mapper: Solar drones take to the skies above Blighty
Happy Satellite Collision Day! It is 10 years since Russia and Iridium got too close for comfort
Canadians moot methods to embiggen moose monument and make Mac great again
Campaigners get go-ahead to challenge exemption UK gave itself over immigrants' data
China's really cotton'd on to this whole Moon exploration thing: First seed sprouts in lunar lander biosphere
SpaceX's Crew Dragon shows up at pad 39A, nearly 8 years after the last Shuttle left
Techie basks in praise for restoring workforce email (by stopping his scripting sh!tshow)
Tuesday 25th December 2018 07:58 GMT 
In a similar vein...
For my sins, I am an MCT, and once ran a (successful) course on SQL Server Querying for a company.
As with other Microsoft courses, it was all run in a virtual environment, on laptops I brought in, but using a database (AdventureWorks, for those who have met it) which had nothing to do with the actual line of business.
We finished a few hours early, so the delegates asked if they could put their new skills into practice on the real databases. Since they had a nice training room, with plenty of PCs, I didn't see any problem with this, and the IT manager couldn't see any issues either, so they all set up, practicing joins, sub queries, grouping, and all the other fun you can have with SQL.....
...for about 10 minutes, when the DBA came running in and demanded, in no uncertain terms, to know what the f@&k we were doing to his production servers, which had slowed to a crawl under the extra load.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
