Posts by A.P. Veening

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Re: the words "DO NOT CLOSE DOWN THIS APPLICATION"

Read again, I never wrote I didn't appreciate it, but that feature is never in the original scope.

Re: the words "DO NOT CLOSE DOWN THIS APPLICATION"

Idiot-proofing is a form of feature creep.

For the nth time, China bans cryptocurrencies

Re: CCP have the attention span of a

The mountains are high and the emperor in Peking is far away (old Chinese proverb, still seems valid as long as you remember to replace the emperor).

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

Re: Personal heaters

I just hadn't considered the possibility of someone unplugging either plug without switching both sockets off first.

That assumes sockets which can be switched, unusual to say the least in several countries I am familiar with.

Re: Personal heaters

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix

Except for a temporary tax hike.

I am quite sure about a third of the readers would have fixed the Arcade machine or at least replaced it by a M.A.M.E cabinet, only it still takes money.

And I would have the key to the moneybox ;)

One-size-fits-all chargers? What a great idea! Of course Apple would hate it

Re: They already do. Have for decades

CE aka China Export.

Re: Apple Cars

5 litre (<1 UK gallon)

A UK gallon is 4.54609 litre.

Re: Apple don't like it?

... fuck 'em.

But use a condom.

Re: In a statement, a spokesperson for Apple told The Reg

For one, it would be much better for waterproofing to have none.

That certainly is a valid point, I am not sure I completely agree with the rest of your post, though I am afraid you are correct.

Nothing works any more. Who decided that redundant systems should become redundant?

Re: What's inside? Pain?

C&A ones aren't bad either.

But that is a Dutch brand using the same size system all over Europe.

Thatcher-era ICL mainframe fingered for failure to pay out over £1bn in UK pensions

This doesn't seem to be a problem caused by "mainframe" or "ICL", but by poor design/architecture and lack of improvements spanning decades. The people in charge would have screwed it up if it was running on any platform, I would guess.

On a positive note, those screw-ups have been pensioned of by now and are reaping the rewards of their labour (underpayment of their pensions) ;)

Microsoft does and doesn't require VMs to meet hardware requirements for Windows 11

Re: WTAF!

3rd rate company with 3rd rate software written by 3rd rate software minions.

I am afraid you are being overly generous, more like 5^th rate company with 5^th rate software written by 5^th rate software minions (and I might still be accused of being generous at that).

Why hope, I for one am not exactly looking forward to a forced upgrade to Windows 11, I don't think it is an improvement.

Electron-to-joule conversion formulae? Cute. Welcome to the school of hard knocks

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

I love that bonus test by your father, is a bit sneaky.

Re: Ask the dog - it has an 80% success rate

Yup once you transliterate Restaurant into Cyrillic you get the Russian. Lots of Russian words are like that, there’s heap of Latinate/German loanwords in Russian. Crack the Cyrillic and they leap out at you.

And most of the maritime idiom is derived from Dutch (a result of Peter the Great spending time in the Netherlands).

Re: Nortel clearly learnt from this...

Did Norton go bust because their stuff was so reliable their customers didn't need to buy anything?

No, because Peter Norton sold the whole outfit to bean counters button sorters.

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

At school/college you were taught the lazy/sailor's way to do a clove hitch, which works fine to tie a small boat to a shore boulder.

You can 'go your own way' over GDPR, says UK's new Information Commissioner

Re: "morally bankrupt pathological liars"

Obviously as a result of these hearings its quite possible that Facebook reformed its business operations and generally cleaned up its act.

I'll agree on possible, but how probable is it?

You want us to make a change? We can do it, but it'll cost you...

Re: "he worked out the coding of the lock file [..] and updated the lock himself

That's called piracy, if I'm not mistaken.

You are mistaken, that is called hacking ;)

Not too bright, are you? Your laptop, I mean... Not you

Re: This would be simple to fix

Too much common sense.

Amazon says Elon Musk's wicked, wicked ways mean SpaceX's Starlink 2.0 should not be allowed to fly

Re: Space is BIG and satellites aren't

Since closing velocities between orbiting stuff are potentially very high -- if things want to stay in orbit, they have to move very fast -- roughly 8km/s -- even small objects are potentially capable of punching right through anything they hit.

While theoretically true, but things in the same orbit move in the same direction and with the same speed. Problems only occur when things are in crossing orbits and only if the things are both^*) at the crossing point of the orbits at the same time.

^*)A three (or more) way collision is theoretically possible, but so unlikely I will leave it to the theorists.

A practical demonstration of the difference between 'resilient' and 'redundant'

Make sure the bean counters are the first to suffer from their own decisions.

FTFY ;)

If you can work this correctly, you can write your own ticket.

Re: Single points of failure always do.

Lovely story, seem to remember reading it before.

Re: Testing the UPS

While we waited for the power to come back we soon discovered that one coffee machine had been accidentally connected to the UPS.

For some reason I doubt it was fully accidentally.

ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' boast from website after French climate activist reportedly arrested

As for the bridge, I'm sorry but that it is traditional Internet-speak :).

It predates the internet by at least a couple of decades.

Re: Philatelicks

And before that you could either use a wet sponge or a dog's tongue.

Compromise reached as Linux kernel community protests about treating compiler warnings as errors

Re: "An unused variable"

If you write your code properly, you know what variables you use and why. This is not a crapshoot, developers do not generally declare variables without a reason.

Depends, on the AS/400 the compilers just pull in all fields from the used files, so an AS/400 program without unused variables is pretty rare.

I'd say there should be a way to determine at what level a warning should change into an error. An unused variable from a copy book is a lot less serious than opening a file for output/update without any writing or deleting in that file.

Report details how Airbus pilots saved the day when all three flight computers failed on landing

Re: Computer Control ?

No, ironically it's a safety interlock that is designed to prevent thrust-reverse deploying in flight.

After this incident, there is a fair chance the reverse thrust will be available for deployment when in alternative "flight" mode with weight on the main landing gear.

Re: Only on landing?

I'd certainly hate to travel when I know I'm relying on a system that fails as often as every 4.3 million hours.

It fails much more often, there is only a very limited time period (actually two) on each flight when this specific problem can occur.

Re: how long is each FCPC allowed to be failed for?

Prof Peter Ladkin (Bielefeld/Abnormal Distribution)

But Bielefeld doesn't exist.

Virginia school board learns a hard lesson... and other stories

Re: "...anywhere that's basically flat"

I guess it would also be handy for crossing the snowy Arctic and Antarctic wastes.

It would if those were reasonably flat.

US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

Re: This just in

Last time a treaty came into play was a couple of hours after the first plane flew into the WTC.

Re: Well Done

The moral of the story is make sure your bosses boss is in the room when you throw the grenade.

A friend of mine (not in IT) used the nucleair option. As her final act before logging off and leaving the building for the last time she sent a carefully prepared farewell email to the entire company with all C-levels by name in the To: field. From a colleague, who lasted two weeks longer, she later learned that all managers in line above her for at least three levels were demoted for gross incompetence. A couple of months later the whole department was moved to another country.

Re: This just in

"well the last war we fought we did it this way"

That is already questionable if they won that war, but when was the last war they did win?

Re: To be fair ?

There may be a one-in-a-million people who rise to management after having lived in helldesk, but this is more than an exception ; it's a miracle.

For helldesk you are completely correct, but I know of enough programmers and analysts that have risen to management and higher. The advantage is that they know IT, the disadvantage is that you can't baffle them with the end product of an uncastrated, adult, male head of cattle (aka rose fertilizer).

Re: Water-agile-fail

To be fair, how would you like it if your underlings understood their jobs better than you did and you had to let them get on with it?

The real fun starts when the underlings understand their boss's job better than the boss himself.

Oh! A surprise tour of the data centre! You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have

Re: Chewed out because I was on holiday

and this guy was reassigned to manage the mail room.

Judging by his reported performance still way above his level.

Re: Heavy breathing call

The bladdy things are all on a steep hilltop.

And not only in Slovakia, but world wide wherever there are steep hilltops available.

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

Re: Burn it to the ground

(or hell freezes over, whatever comes first).

FYI: Hell has already frozen over, the old Norse were right that hell is a cold place. And I am pretty sure Lenovo hasn't learned that lesson yet, so avoid if at all possible.

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

Re: the sirens would be a handy reminder

Can you imagine the noise if Microsoft did this for Patch Tuesday?

Especially in those parts of the world where the patch lands at 1 AM Wednesday.

Well, be fair, 3 months is a long time for a lunch.

Not according to Lig Lury Jr, the fourth editor of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Re: Only once a month ..

Here in NL, first Monday of the month at 12:00 sharp! never had a misfire AFAIK...

In that case you are not old enough, I still remember the occasional silence on the first Monday of the month (disregarding holydays like Easter and Pentacost) and also hearing them at other days/times without cause.

Fired credit union employee admits: I wiped 21GB of files from company's shared drive in retaliation

Re: SOME???

Really? Any large, multi-user, database worth running is worth protecting with a journal which is written to with a complete list of changes as they are made so that they can be rolled back or forwards as necessary. This is not a new invention, the ICL Data Dictionary System I worked on in the 1980's had it.

True, but journaling doesn't protect against dropping tables or even complete databases.

Re: Rather moronic

rm -rf as root? Or some flavor of it? format /u ?

I am not going to tell how, but it will mess up the system pointers. Those with enough knowledge of the AS/400 will know enough (and probably already know about it).

Re: Rather moronic

Actually at least 30 minutes before she is told her services are no longer required and if she is showing signs of heading for the door or serious issues arising even earlier. Don't leave a window of opportunity.

Depends a bit on the person. I've been told more than once that my services weren't required anymore (in one case twice at the same company) and I had full access up until the minute I logged off prior to leaving for the last time. At the company where I was employed twice (over ten years with a four month break after about three years) I could get QSECOFR access on the development machine in about four minutes, on the production machine it would have taken me a bit longer. I never abused that and I was informed of my contract being terminated well over a month in advance. There is something called professional pride.

On a side note: to convert an AS/400^*) into a smoking pile of trash you only need QSYSOPR access and knowledge of a couple of basic commands.

^*) or iSeries or however IBM likes to call it this month

Branson (in a) pickle: FAA grounds Virgin Galactic flights after billionaire's space trip veered off course

Re: Oh well

who the f else is going to be flying around at 100 000 feet?

Elon Musk's vehicles are reportedly crossing that altitude pretty frequently in a nearly vertical direction and at high speed.

Re: Leaving the virtual tube

If I read this correctly, the complaint is that the vehicle did not ascend inside a specified imaginary tube, but strayed outside it for 2 minutes.

In combination with "SpaceShipTwo was simply not climbing steeply enough.", I'd say a bit more tail wind (or less head wind) than calculated.