Posts by A.P. Veening

How much would you pay me to develop a COVID tracking app that actually works? Ah, thought so: nothing

Re: Tea....

In that case, please let me express my hope you remain being no influencer.

Today I shall explain how dual monitors work using the medium of interpretive dance

Re: IT managers were always the most difficult

As an IT manager (also only IT person in the business)

That only makes you a (dis)honorary manager, not a real one with the appropriate lack of skills in the subject matter (here IT).

A speech recognition app goes into a bar. Speak up if you’ve heard it already

Re: Bunker

Ideal cool place for storing home brewed wine.

Since when is wine brewed? And how does it compare with pressed wine?

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: Nowadays of course the boot is on the other foot

I have mine set to switch to do not disturb mode at 16:30 and goes back to normal at 08:00 the next day.

I hope you set it back to normal the next working day. Or are you so important you are on call during office hours in the weekend?

As System76 starts work on its own Linux desktop world, GNOME guy opens blog, engages flame mode

Re: Jealous Gnome Devs

Fixing the former requires fixing the latter. I am afraid only one thing will suffice.

Say what you see: Four-letter fun on a late-night support call

Re: Not really concealing anything, more like technically accurate shorthand.

In the same vein:

PEBKAC - Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

ID-ten-T error - ID10T

Re: Not really concealing anything, more like technically accurate shorthand.

New Stomach Ache Inducing Drug.

Re: Not really concealing anything, more like technically accurate shorthand.

Don't forget the case of what TWAIN is best remembered as, Technology Without An Interesting Name

My first association with TWAIN is SLC.

Re: We all know the best Bond film

You're forgetting the original Casino Royale. The one with David Niven in it. And Woody Allen. And Ronnie Corbett.

Don't forget Peter Sellers.

Sharing is caring, except when it's your internet connection

Re: Back in the day

And the stories and reactions to it will go critical within moments of it going life, causing a massive singularity.

Re: Only free if your time is worth nothing

Business trip to USA and staying in a ubiquitous Best Western where the house wifi was a 'shocking' $3 USD per person, per day. Even though we were on expenses, we devoted the rest of our trip to trying to hack into the wifi. We were unsuccessful but saved the company the 'outrageous' expense.

In a similar situation I paid and set up the connection on my phone. The hotel was a bit surprised by the amount of data my phone used, unaware my laptop was tethered to the phone, happily downloading a Windows update and working as a WiFi hotspot for my wife's phone.

Pack your bags – we may have found the first planet outside of our galaxy

Re: Applications now open, no deposit required.

4. Insert your name, or nominate someone you love, here.

Given the company and the duration of the one way trip, I'd rather nominate somebody I would love to see go.

Windows Subsystem for Android: What's the point?

Re: A 4GB laptop upgrade is around £20

For Mac users, add a zero ;-)

And not in front.

Orders wrong, resellers receiving wrong items? Must be a programming error and certainly not a rushing techie

Re: Fun with punch cards

That truly accidental double form feed worked even better for that.

Research finds consumer-grade IoT devices showing up... on corporate networks

Re: News at 9....

Always fun when somebody plugs something in that starts handing out DHCP addresses.

And that something can be the cheapest Raspberry Pi you can find with just an OS and a DHCP server installed. The power source for it might cost more.

How to keep a support contract: Make the user think they solved the problem

Re: How site visits work

In cases like that long hair has a distinct advantage when shaking your head at that user.

I thought OSI was extended like: Layers 8, 9 and 10 are Friends, Money and Politics; in any appropriate layer sequence assignment.

You've got the general idea, but layer 8 consists of users, layer 9 of their managers (and layer 13 of auditors).

Judging by the way your face lit up, my inbox just got more attractive

Re: Dabsy, I've been amused ...

We left-pondians need all the enjoyable distractions we can find.

This right-pondian (at least when facing in a northerly direction) needs need all the enjoyable distractions he can find as well.

Boeing 737 Max chief technical pilot charged with deceiving US aviation regulators over MCAS

True, but without regular checks (just like the occasional cop) to keep the business more or less honest, the bottom line becomes the sole motivator.

The Reg does like to twist the MCAS tale.

More like twisting the knife.

Re: Some extra info

I vaguely recall Boeing may have had a customer contract with a major customer,that required all their planes to be covered by the same pilot training. I think it had a serious cash penalty if the 737max didn't get a generic 737 training program.

Correct, that was Southwest Airlines.

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Re: All the lines between...?

Had the software naively accepted the input, it might have deleted nothing (since the start is already past the end) or all the lines *except* (signed/unsigned confusion and integer wrap around) but *between* implies that whoever wrote this code took the trouble to spot the error ... and then quietly executed it anyway.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

There's a special place in hell for those folks, managed by a demon with the BOFH cattle-prod on its "supernatural" setting.

AMEN!

Nothing says 'We believe in you' like NASA switching two 'nauts off Boeing's Starliner onto SpaceX's Crew Dragon

That is a very relevant comment because in recent years Boeing executives effectively abandoned their previous engineering excellence and public safety first policies in favour of bean counting and quick fixes and the inevitable result was the 737 Max with its terrible disasters.

Not quite, the Boeing engineering executives were replaced by McDonnel-Douglas bean counting and button sorting executives when Boeing "took over"^*) McDonnel-Douglas.

^*) Officially (and according to the finances), Boeing took over McDonnel-Douglas. When you look at the management and executive level, McDonnel-Douglas took over Boeing while keeping the name of the latter for the reputation.

BOFH: You. Wouldn't. Put. A. Test. Machine. Into. Production. Without. Telling. Us.

Re: Hah! New keyboard required!

but I would always - where possible - go for pulling an unterminated cable, chopping a couple of inches off to get a clean end and then terminating it once it's through the hole.

AMEN! to that, it isn't that hard to put RJ45 plugs on a cable, just make sure you follow standards in the sequence of the wires (and really push them as far as possible).

Re: The guy's here...

Computer to Colleague: Good try, but a number is and a lower case character are required.

FTFY ;)

Re: "We've bought this setup and now you must make it work"

I'll send you an extimate for that

Extimate, is that an extortionate estimate?

Gartner's Windows 11 adoption advice: Explore but don't rush

The best way to make money it to satisfy your customers.

True, but only in anything longer than the short term, but the short term is the only thing bean counters are interested in as that is the only thing they understand.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

Re: What a surprise

and we're left with the current dogs breakfast.

Way worse, no self respecting dog would touch it, leave alone eat it.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Want to run it?

I am using WSL2 on Windows 10 and I am not on the Insiders Track, so there must be something else.

Windows 11 in detail: Incremental upgrade spoilt by onerous system requirements and usability mis-steps

it's about Microsoft making a lot of quick bucks.

FTFY ;)

Re: Windows versions

I am missing 2K in that list (and that was way better than XP until SP2).

Goof luck with that

Lovely typo (or was it intended? In which case chapeau.)

User to chatbot: Help! My kid has COVID! Chatbot to user: Always wear a condom

Why would anybody think it's a good idea for a chatbot to give health advice? The people who approved that are dangerously incompetent.

I'd say they have a medical issue with their brains.

Firewalls? Pfft – it's no match for my mighty spares-bin PC

Re: Basic rules of engineering

here's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix...

Except for a temporary tax hike.

Maker of ATM bombing tutorials blew himself up – Euro cops

Re: Think of it

the deceased found an interesting and perhaps unique way to bring their life to an end.

The award winner doesn't necessarily need to die, he (or she, but those are rare) only has to terminate the possibility to pass his genes to the next generation in an interesting and perhaps unique way. A case in point is this tale about a lobster thief.

NB: By definition a Darwin award winner hasn't procreated yet.

Re: Think of it

Only if he didn't already pass his criminal genes to the next generation.

Cheeky chappy rides horse around London filling station, singing: 'I don't need petrol 'cos he runs on carrots'

Re: Why now

The visa scheme should have had a 12 month minimum term. At least that might be a bit more less unattractive.

FTFY

Computer shuts down when foreman leaves the room: Ghost in the machine? Or an all-too-human bit of silliness?

Re: Fuel pumps

It didn't work for long enough to play the last line

Not a real problem if you already had the song on CD (or vinyl or tape), sound quality was also better that way.

Re: And their plugs are crap

It gets interesting when you then look at what Thailand did: they use those US plugs and sockets, but for 220..240V and sometimes for a lot more amps than they were designed for.

Those sockets will also happily accept euro-plugs and those are designed for that kind of voltage.

Even on a spur, the only thing after the switch should be lights (and maybe other stuff that needs to be switched), not outlets.

Re: Fuel pumps

... or anything else

Not true, it was perfectly capable of delivering on the chorus line of "Start Me Up", to which the rights to use it for the commercial were bought.

One-character bug gives away $90m in COMP tokens – recipients can keep 10% or consider themselves doxxed

Re: Are the tokens convertible to cash somehow?

Because just about everybody who is neither an American citizen, a Green Card holder nor otherwise resident in the USA can give them the finger with impunity, by last count that is still about six billion. And the Infernal Revenue Service is well aware of its limits is there are already repercussions about taxing "accidental Americans".

tz database community up in arms over proposals to merge certain time zones

True, but that spreads it over non-contiguous time zones.

Re: I thought that the merge started taking place in 1939....

No, Warszawa and Berlin.

And parts of the EU spread even further around the world than that: France isn't just "metropolitan France", for example. In fact, perhaps that's the current "empire on which the sun never sets"? ;-D

Meaning God doesn't trust those French in the dark either ;)

Re: Dates

Do you really want America to make good on its claim it is the future?

And the EU is spread over at least four five time zones with Greece on one end and the Azores Cabo Verde on the other.

2FA? More like 2F-in-the-way: It seems no one wants me to pay for their services after all

Re: I will raise my hand and admit…

That's not a friendly colour, it doesn't make me want to donate anything apart from blood.

And not my blood at that.

'Extraordinary' pigs step in to protect Schiphol airport from marauding geese

Re: Useful fact

It is also the only major airport below sea level. With the current radio altimeters it isn't a problem anymore, but with the old barometric altimeters foreign pilots used to get upset by flying at negative heights before touching down.

If your head's not in the cloud, you're not in the right place

Re: Time to disavow the following notion...

Uni has never done that. Never will. Not designed for it. Never has been.

Depends upon which uni where, I could mention a couple of unis that actually do and where original thought is strictly forbidden.

People who think that unis are there to turn out workers are insane.

Or have experience with unis that do.