Posts by A.P. Veening

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: Tautology at its finest

Yup, that qualifies as overly redundant tautology

Airbus okays use of ‘Taxibot’ to tow planes to the runway

Re: Fuel and weight considerations

Maximum takeoff weight won't be affected, fuel load at push back will be.

With a bit of logical thinking, you might discover that isn't necessarily a problem.

If the bot hooks up from the back, it can decouple and scuttle back between the legs of the main landing gear (it is low enough to fit under the fuselage of all aircraft with the possible exception of the B737).

Re: 747 class towing

Also keep in mind that this solution by Airbus isn't certified for the A340, A350 or A380 yet

FTFY ;)

Re: Proper warm up still required

Most runways at Schiphol are pretty close to the terminal, but 18R/36L (aka the Polderbaan) is a bit further away on the other side of the A5 highway. And yes, for that runway these taxibots seem ideal.

Yes, I wrote a very expensive bug. In my defense I was only seven years old at the time

Re: I saw similar a couple times in that timeframe ...

Now cellular service...it's a license to steal.

That also depends on the country.

'Trained monkey' from tech support saved know-it-all manager's mistake with a single keypress

Re: deja vu.

CEO said infront of everybody "Thats why Im running the business side and we make sure we got skilled guys like that for the tech".

Classy with style, I like him.

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

Re: Honestly I'm bilingual

I'd say the moon is a wee bit closer than the sun to 4200 miles (though I find the number quite suspicious, looks like someone just took the answer and added a couple of zeros).

Re: Honestly I'm bilingual

That is just a short ton. The equivalent to a European or long ton is closer to 2200 pounds.

Re: Honestly I'm bilingual

If you want real fun with tyres, look into aviation tyres. The most important part of those is the serial number as each tyre is individually tracked.

Re: I'm ancient enough

And when converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit, those fraction are easily manageable as the starting temperature is usually given in whole numbers or sometimes halves.

and time off when annoying users are around.

That really is a huge bonus.

Microsoft broke DHCP for Windows Server last Patch Tuesday

I always preferred Macrosof, the Macro instead of Micro should be self explanatory and a "sof" translates into English as (huge) failure.

Re: FTFY

FTFY

Its not recommended to install Windows.

BOFH: Rerouting responsibility via firewall configs

Re: ... or some cosmetically waxed neanderthals

I would qualify that as a redundant tautology.

Behold! Humanity has captured our first look at the Sun's South Pole

Re: "The Sun is our nearest star"

I'd say that point wobbles a bit thanks mostly to Jupiter, a little bit to Saturn and the remainder the other planets collectively.

Probably named Binky

Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem

That senior (and thus Japanese) member was way too important^*) to listen to you about minor things like that.

^*) At least in his own opinion.

This was for the London office of a Japanese bank

Let me guess: BoTM.

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: It happens to the best of us.

At 404 I usually sleep.

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One of the advantages of setting your digital clocks to 24h display is that you are never confused about AM and PM. Besides that, 1337 is a nice, LEET time.

BOFH: The Boss meets the unbearable weight of innovation

But blockchAIn has AI in it.

Re: So... do you think that everyone who works at Nike is an athlete?

Had a former boss who swooshed into the IT Dept. one fine day, with a visiting dignitary, only to start proclaiming we were doing everything in Java - this was circa 1998. We were an AS/400 shop! Java? No, but we can show you some nice RPG

By that time the AS/400 could do JAVA (and the RPG-JAVA interface is fascinating interesting).

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Vincent truck Gogh

Slightly too late for an edit:

Check the pronunciation at Wikipedia Vincent van Gogh, that is pretty good.

Re: Vincent truck Gogh

The initial G is pronounced as an H, and the final gh as in the correct Irish/Scottish pronounciation of loch, i.e. with the 'ch' in the back of the throat, not as "lock", hence he is Vincent van Hoch, with a guttural 'ch'.

As somebody born and bred in the Netherlands with Dutch as mother tongue, a mother who is a retired teacher of Dutch (and a father who also used to teach languages), I can tell you with absolute certainty that initial "G" is not pronounced as an "H" (unless you speak the dialect from Zeeland, where they switch them around) but as the "ch" in loch.

Ask the Rijksmuseum if you doubt it.

I recommend you do so yourself.

Dilettante dev wrote rubbish, left no logs, and had no idea why his app wasn't working

Re: Divers log

Not as consistent over time as one might have thought.

Excellent point, but at least valid in the time period in which people are using Excel.

Re: Divers log

The correct display should have been 01:15, perfectly human readable and Excel will sum it correctly.

BOFH: HR tries to think appy thoughts

Re: Stop doing this

Ah, no, wait, no sense of humour.

Doesn't matter, they will see it as a manual anyway.

Re: Gamification

Makes for lovely timesheet entries, which is the only known way to make it stop.

Re: "HR tries to think appy thoughts"

But it is derived from the Dutch word "baas".

Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine

Re: Have you hired kids and regretted it?

You mean the actual defenestration has been censored out?

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

Re: I once coded APPROPRIATE profanity in a splash screen.

To the utterly predictable howls of outrage from sales conveyed to my manager that this was inappropriate language to expose to customers, I responded by by pointing out that internal-only test versions were never supposed to be given out in the first place.

Let me guess, that only made them howl louder and now for blood.

Tariff-ied Framework pulls laptops, Keyboardio warns of keystroke sticker shock

The bigliest wellest.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

Re: DOGE incompetence

Firewalled? Sure, but I've worked on COBOL programs generating that HTML and those used the life database as changes happened too regularly to rely on an intermediary.

Re: MAGA

Please don't insult morons, they would do a better job.

Re: DOGE incompetence

There is zero chance than ANY of the web site is written in COBOL.

While technically true as websites are usually written in HTML or similar, there is a very real possibility that the HTML of the viewed pages is generated on the fly by programs written in COBOL.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: "My mouse is going the wrong way"

From your point of view it may have been a mistake (Was it really? What were the long term prospects with either for you?), from their point of view it was a blessing, so I'd say you've done a good deed.

Re: Not magnetic field, more star field?

May I hope a note about this officer unworthy stupidity was entered in the officer evaluation file of the OOD? This level of stupidity should be a career limiting point.

Re: Anglepoise Lamp

1, why would the user be "illuminating the screen" with an anglepoise lamp? External light on a CRT or any emissive display makes the picture harder to see..

I suspect it isn't illuminating the screen but the keyboard and/or nearby papers.

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: Even Novell crashes caused confusion

That capital "A" really helped there with the way the Germans pronounced it.

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: Jock centered societies

Don't forget the Japanese Samurai (though they managed to avoid total collapse due to outside interference by commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1853).

Re: Bonus benefit: the scientists will live longer

There is a difference between Chinese food as served in the west to westerners and Chinese food in China served to Chinese.

And you may be right that Chinese healthcare isn't expensive, it also isn't of the highest quality. Frankly, the quality of healthcare in most of Europe is a lot better than in the USA.

Re: Aix-Marseille is awesome

I've no doubt that offer will be win-win!

I've no doubt whatsoever it will be a serious loss for the USA.

Re: Pathetic

ffs I thought there were at least some adults reading el reg.

Reading yes, commenting not so much.

Re: les queer studies?

Pay rubles, get monkeys.

Now you are insulting to monkeys, they won't do it for less than peanuts.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Re: I know about ambitious lazy know-it-alls as well

I've heard it's even possible to be promoted all the way to President of some countries based on precisely the same scenario,

Not quite, that also requires bankrupting some casinos, something requiring exceptional talent.

Microsoft patches patch that broke USB printing in Windows 11

Re: Printer poop

And use business reply mail so Microsoft pays for it.

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

Either way you're terminated...

So that is what those SCSI terminators were for.

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: Well Done.

He's reading and contacting The Register after all.

Excellent point, worthy of way more than the single upvote I can give.

Developer wrote a critical app and forgot where it ran – until it stopped running

Re: Buried an old PC running a proxy server in a wall in my townhouse.

Turns out the couple worked for a 3-letter agency in Langley, Virginia.

There is No Such Agency.

RIP Mark Klein, the engineer who exposed US domestic spying ops after wiring it up

May he rest in peace.