Posts by A.P. Veening

We don't need maintenance this often, surely? Pull it. Oh dear, the system's down

(which makes it all the more annoying I can't be certain who the second culprits were).

Unless I am very much mistaken (it's been known to happen), one took over the other, so no problem for you to refuse to use both.

Re: How about nonpayment?

Depends upon the contract and the jurisdiction.

Reminds me of something at a former place of work as told to me by the colleague involved, who was hired through an agency. In his normal line of duty, he received a call from that agency with a question about why an overdue invoice for one particular agency worker (himself) wasn't payed yet. His reply: "My salary is already a bit longer overdue". "Oh sh.......".

Re: An ex employer did that too.

I am afraid security is pretty good at LAX ;)

Thunderbird implements PGP crypto feature requested 21 years ago

Re: Thunderbird only?

Yup, one of the easiest methods to decrypt an encrypted hard drive under Windows is telling Windows the computer has moved to France.

Elecrow CrowPi2: Neat way to get your boffins-to-be hooked on Linux from an early age and tinkering in no time

Re: Forty-odd years ago...

Haven't found a use for a Pi yet

The best use so far I've found for a Pi is Pi-Hole. And once you have that running, you can add some other functions to it, like controller for a set of access points and/or VPN entry point to your home network from outside.

Re: "The kiddiwonks won't even know they're learning"

Meanwhile, mental activities can only be helped by rote to a limited extent.

But some basics have to be learned by rote as without those basics you can't reliably move on to the next thing.

And yes, you are completely correct that Japanese (and most other Asians) have serious difficulties when it comes to thinking outside the box. Once during a conversion I did some on the fly programming with two Japanese colleagues (over from Tokyo HQ) watching to correct a minor problem and they didn't understand how I could do it so quickly. In their experience the (in my eyes minor) problem would have required at least a week of study to understand while I produced working code within the hour. After I had shown them, they could understand it (they said), but they weren't capable of reproducing it. But as the results were completely satisfactory, they were satisfied everything was done right.

Re: Repetition = practice

All very nice and very logical, but completely wrong. The very basics of math, the tables of multiplication, can only be learned by repetition until the answers come automatically. Of course you can write them down every time you need them, but that is also repetitive and gets boring quite quickly as well besides incredibly time consuming. Learning those by rote is (unfortunately) the only practical way. And my elder son dearly hates it at an age he already should know them, something for which I blame the school as the teachers didn't pay enough attention to that problem. I can keep insisting at home, but without at least equal push from school, that is a lost cause.

Re: "The kiddiwonks won't even know they're learning"

Hell. I want one.

Make that three, one each for my two sons and one for myself.

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

How effing difficult is it to use a 1 with serifs and 0 with a strike through?

Judging by what I see on this site, the latter seems impossible.

Re: good grief

As far as I know, anyone else outside UK only uses letters as a prefix to identify a region.

In that case, please let me correct you. In the Netherlands there is no way whatsoever to determine a region from the license plate. The only information to be derived from it, is when the car was first sold (and assigned a license "number"). On the other hand, there is no confusion between "0" (cipher) and "O" (letter) as vowels aren't used (with the exception of "AA" sometime in the past for the royal house).

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

Incoming defamation lawsuit in 3... 2... 1...

More likely a secret trial for leaking official secrets.

Anybody too stupid to get an honest job?

Re: Perhaps CBP

Very nice idea, unfortunately they are unable to execute it because they are idiots (or high level genius monkeys, just as likely for those peanuts that salary).

Re: How can we be sure

that they were real CBP Officers?

Easy, fake ones aren't that stupid.

Don't pay the ransom, mate. Don't even fix a price, say Australia's cyber security bods

Re: Easy to say

or something preventing already written data from being overwritten.

WORM storage

Re: Security Practices

I know I am paranoid....but am I paranoid enough?

I'd say you are about half way there ;)

If you knew the truth, you'd vote differently.

Yup, with aimed lead instead of pencil and paper.

OPPO's ColorOS 11 hits beta, but swerves EU audience over GDPR compliance concerns

GDPR is neither woolly nor ill-defined (I know, had to study it for my job as that involved processing information about natural persons in the EU). As for the draconian penalties, that is an option and not mandatory and mostly there to force some large American companies, which have a tendency to think they are above all laws except sometimes for American, into compliance.

Typical '80s IT: Good idea leads to additional duties, without extra training or pay, and a nuked payroll system

Re: Shadowing - What could go wrong

Been there, done that, told the sales droids that if they ever sell something like that ever again (especially after committing me and my team without even consulting me about it) then they're the ones who will support it and I will refuse to have anything to do with it...

In the end you will have to do it anyway, so that is an empty threat. However, telling them that all additional expenses will be clawed back completely from their bonuses and salary does have a tendency to get their attention, especially if you put it in writing and add it as an addendum to their contract.

Re: Typical '80s IT: Good idea leads to additional duties, without extra training or pay

Why bother looking for a paddle? Looking for a bailing bucket is a lot more useful as it is leaky as well.

Three middle-aged Dutch hackers slipped into Donald Trump's Twitter account days before 2016 US election

Re: ExVet

Or something involving North Korea.

One can hope Donald and Vladimir Vladimirovitsch come to an agreement on this one, start leaning on Bei Jing to keep out of it and nuke Pyong Yang.

Re: Enter the hash into a search engine ...

Left foot or right foot? Inquiring minds need to know ;)

IBM made ‘top-down’ efforts to fire older workers, says US employment discrimination watchdog

Re: Next Time!!

Without penalties, a hearing like this is just going to encourage IBM to be more creative next time.

And with penalties even more so.

VMware staff in Silicon Valley can leave a pandemic, wildfire-ridden zone – if they're willing to accept less pay

Re: Is

It might even be illegal in the Land Of The Free, but it is certainly legal in The Land Of The Fee (And Home Of The Slave).

The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon

Re: No FreeBSD daemon? @Evil Auditor

I am not completely sure all three are good ideas.

Re: No FreeBSD daemon?

To which I reply: "Your beliefs are offensive to me and since you started this discussion ... ".

Most beat a very hasty retreat after that.

Re: Trumpet

What is a better cheerleader than a spawn?

Competitive techies almost bring distributed disaster upon themselves – and they didn't even find any aliens

Re: Other BOINC projects

I see looking in the mirror also failed to show it.

Re: Major Telcos and SETI

a Dutch telco whose name began with K

Only one of those around, the English translation of the name starts with "R".

Classy move: C++ 20 wins final approval in ISO technical ballot, formal publication expected by end of year

Three-way comparison - long overdue

There are many other new features, including the “spaceship operator” <=> which does a three-way comparison and returns less, equal or more.

As the title already says, long overdue. It was already available in RPG some 60 years ago.

Brexit border-line issues: Would you want to still be 'testing' software designed to stop Kent becoming a massive lorry park come 31 December?

Re: Time to up the level of smuggling.

Only if Wales gets out of the Union and rejoins the EU.

Re: Testing? Are you having a larf?

I doubt even that and even in a brewery.

Re: Oh yes

Nobody does IT cock-ups like the UK government.

With the Dutch and Belgian government running a close, tied second place.

With a million unwanted .uk domains expiring this week, Nominet again sends punters pushy emails to pay up

Re: @"They have some explaining to do."

Actually I like my .me.uk. Just sayin'

Nice one, there even is a language with the word "meuk", with a meaning of valueless stuff but not quite trash.

Anyone else noticed that the top countries for broadband speeds are well-known tax havens? No? Just us then?

Re: Move to Spain

Catalunya also has some nice places.

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

Re: That Win 3.1/WinSocks house of cards...

If you want scientific and email problems, you should read the story about the 500 mile email.

Snowden was right: US court deems NSA bulk phone-call snooping illegal, possibly unconstitutional, and probably pointless anyway

Re: What is the point of the court ruling ?

Interesting to note that it's become taken for granted that any politician in a high enough position has something they can be blackmailed about

In America it is a scandal if a politician breaks his marital vows, in France everybody is surprised if a politician doesn't have something on the side. No French politician can be blackmailed with something like that.

Everything's falling apart. The Moon is slowly rusting up – and it's probably Earth's fault

Re: "1.5x10^27 oxygen particles [..] annually"

Don't forget O₃, aka Ozon.

Borking all over the world: At home or abroad, you're never more than 6ft from a BSOD

Re: its amazing how many embedded systems use Windows.

True, but that would have deprived us of both these stories and our chance to comment on them, so I am chalking this up as a win ... for us.

Re: Snowball in a Blast Furnance

I would too ... if it were a Microsoft furnace.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... a pair of black holes coalesced resulting in largest gravitational wave we've seen

Re: How small can you go?

Excellent phraseology, have a ======>

Funny, that: Handy script for wiping directories is capable of wreaking havoc beyond a miscreant's wildest dreams

Re: There, but for the grace of God,

Definitely, look at those ten commandments, bashed into stone ;)

Re: My contribution ...

How many people can say they were saved by an earthquake?

Re: My contribution ...

Do you mean Ring Ring?

Re: My contribution...

You sure earned your BOFH papers with that one and lucky to have a BMFH backing you.

Re: capable hands of Windows Server 2003

The real beauty there is the attempt by Microsoft to replace their AS/400s with NT servers.

Re: My contribution ...

What can go wring will go wrong!

ROFLMAO! Have a ===>

China trolls Trump with tech export rules changes that could imperil TikTok sale

Re: Just a reminder

All that test proves is that he is not senile or has memory problems.

All that test proves is that it failed to detect senility and/or memory problems.

Re: but he's a late comer.

If only they would indeed follow him there, would rid the world of a lot of garbage (and Trump in the bargain).

IBM ordered to pay £22k to whistleblower and told by judges: Teach your managers what discrimination means

Re: Dysfunctional

Illegally disturbing employees at home.