Posts by Jou (Mxyzptlk)

You need to RTFM, but feel free to use your brain too

Re: Writing "how to" documentation is very much like programming

And CPUs use "out of order execution" today... If you have the money several hundred CPUs at the same time. They become more and more human.

Trouble hiring? Consider loosening your remote work policy

> What we do is highly adaptable. Most expert systems do not react well to seeing something outside of the criteria they are told to look for.

You describe artificial "intelligence" in its current state...

> The real great resignation is, that many orgs are resigned to doing nothing about it.

Inertia at speed which makes tectonics look like light speed.

Or "The problem that has been known for decades, and it it only getting worse".

Re: Remote Deskcrap

Half the diskspace, half the ram, half the CPUs = 0.125 ( 1/8 th) of you previous machine - which was probably already old.

Then you need Norio Kudo, current President for the International Go Federation.

We are fine with outsourcing to India, Bulgaria

or wherever. But at home, refusing remote work? The old double standard problem, combined with ignorance.

US senators seek input on their cryptocurrency law via GitHub – and get some

Re: Countering symptoms rather than the cause

They are taught "The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States" every day from their first school day.

And if you don't comply they will call the "school police officer" since you are a "disturbance", and you, as a six year old kid, are put into solitary confinement. I.e. you are forced to be in a different room for detention, forced to sit at a table which is build so you cannot see any other pupil in that room, and being verbally tortured by a "teacher" in the best Full Metal Jacket style, and write whatever the teach says. That Simpsons thing Bart does in every opening is not a joke, though he doesn't have to sit at those solitary confinement tables.

We, as German, remember when this was common in Germany. And ISIS ISS and all the other fanatics follow the same logic as US schools do.

(Source: Various "American living in <any EU country>" youtube channels)

Whatever you do, don't show initiative if you value your job

Re: why a new install?

IF you have a log what was deleted and where... And invest the time to actually know that was what happened, and invest the time to actually do it. Your idea sounds nice, but the reality is: You need to make 100% sure it works on every machine, and that can only be done by doing it fresh.

Re: "So was James truly the guilty party?"

Would a junction work? It works in quite a lot of situations, and Windows uses it a lot for compatibility. c:\inetpub, for example, can be moved to a different drive and a junction from c:\inetpub to <wherever> works fine!

Re: "So was James truly the guilty party?"

This is where Vista was the first Windows OS that silently redirected such writes to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore . My "Windows" directory there is full of .ini files, and many of them with fresh last change date. Like cool.ini, since I still use Cooledit 2000 on Win11 x64. I also have a "ProgramData" and "Program Files (x86)" there, which is not surprising and contains the expected suspects.

In my opinion: A GENIUS move to to do that since Vista, solves a lot compatibility issues.

BTW: The same goes for the registry, check your HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore.

Microsoft forgot to renew the certificate for its Windows Insider subdomain

Re: 20 seconds of thought ...

Stop telling the truth! They are even too cool to even notify anyone about CERTs, and then blame those who do the monitoring.

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

Re: Manual page numbering

Use "Paste without formatting" which pastes only the text and excludes a chunk of other nonsense.

Microsoft sadly uses the "We are intelligent and have to help the user, he might want to keep all that formatting from the Text. But oh no, we pasted it, but it is from the internet, we don't trust it" logic.

Those guys only know UINT32 with the decimal point moved by two digits. Until recently...

You mean he will hunt down that particular AC?

That time a techie accidentally improved an airline's productivity

Re: Ownership

I am lucky to have (nearly) none of your type in my work environment. And those which at that type, they are usually customer employees and not in our company (branch of company to be exact).

Re: Easy to miss something trivial

You forgot "Generation Smartphone", which has no CTRL (on their touch-keyboards).

Re: simple, clear, and predictable menu system

This is so true it hurts. Whether is is Windows, one of those many Linuxes, Office programs (all of them), browsers, smartphones...

I see a difference between "lazy", and "efficient". Efficiency is to do the same work with less hassle and quicker. Laziness is just to avoid work - and quite often the type who screams "X is not a team player" when seeing someone who might expose it due X being efficient.

> The the boss politely told the user to f*ck off.

My response would be along "If you cannot use the equipment properly you can order the engineer at your private expense." - and show how much it cost last time.

Maybe the boss did :D

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: nice story

Thorium based reactors won't come as quickly as you might expect. Reason: Overall too expensive. Even with subsidy still too expensive. They will only exist to produce weapon grade plutonium, for example. So it requires "military need", where cost does not matter.

Re: nice story

You deserve double, no triple thumbs up from everyone for pointing that out.

Re: Goodbye Basingstoke

They expected you to work on a 415 V control power for a nuke without a fail-over possibility (triple fail-over please) and maintenance window? That indeed does improve my confidence in safety!

I say: Take away the "US-designed" in your post, and I'll agree.

For a simple reasons: Those reactor elements have enough distance to keep the chain reaction from starting. Those elements are burned out. The water is there to take the neutrons they still radiate. Depending on the reactor type those elements must stay there for five to fifteen years.

Take away one of those three conditions and your element cooling installation will change the state. Either the water will change to gaseous state, or the elements will change to liquid state. Or both.

The water is, btw, not really just distilled. It often contains neutron moderators/absorbers to store more elements in the same space, and the concentrations must be controlled. Which adds a fourth condition to the "don't take that away" list.

Re: nice story

Oh, that dam failure is a nice comparison! Even though is it a baaad disaster: The area is not contaminated with invisible non-smelling radiation which will be there for the next 100+ years. Chornobyl area is a good comparison. It was 36 years ago, now some russian solder went a bit rough with the ground and suffer from something that happened in that area 15+ years before they were born.

Re: Something about Americans.....

> It's as if "Do this" and "Don't do this" were invitations to do the opposite for them.

Sounds like good software testers to me!

Re: nice story

"Actually, my comment on safety of nuclear power was a joke."

You have to use irony tags. Especially since 2016 when everything which once was meant ironical or as a joke turned out to be worst possible truth. And everything which was meant to be true and honest turned out to be the irony of real life.

My irony detector broke down fully when COVID and those "Querdenker" popped up in Germany.

Re: nice story

What do you expect from a German? British politeness?

Re: nice story

> Fusion products helium, hardy a dangerous by-product.

Fusing two H atoms the current way with deuterium and / or tritium, you get one or more leftover neutrons. Also known as beta-radiation. Those end up in the walls of the reactor, making the reactor walls radioactive, and hot, and that generates the energy. Even without deuterium or tritium you'll end up with radiation. Have fun checking the truth in my words - they are real.

Hundreds of people every day worldwide from coal? I'd say that is an understatement! There must be a lot more! One hundred is currently the COVID death-rate each day of UK or Germany alone. Walking on the sidewalk in a non-dangerous area with the sidewalk in good condition is deadlier than coal when looking world-wide.

Radioactivity: It makes large areas inhabitable. The radioactivity from 1986 is still measurable worldwide, and kills at least as much as coal. The one from 2011 too. It is neither more safe or cheaper. Check those many World Radioactivity Maps

I am surprised how many Brit seem to fall for lobbyists, believing when they say "it is safe". But there were quite a few bad decisions lately in Brit which they really really regret. They really really regret listening and trusting to that one guy, especially fishermen. But don't worry, we have more idiots than good here in Germany as well - COVID exposed them without mercy.

Re: nice story

and completely ignoring the nuclear waste problem, 'cause that cost is shift over to the state. Worldwide unsolved.

A solar cell going boom? A local problem within a square meter, no permanent damage. Batteries going boom? A few square meter, usually without permanent damage, a bit cleanup might be required (except when baldy implemented you lose your house, limited damage area). A large wind turbine going boom? Depending on the direction a few hundred square meter of trash cleanup. Nothing permanent, can be recycled.

Nuclear going boom or just a little bit wrong? History tells us what to learn, you just need to listen. And don't forget those many little happy accidents which didn't make it to the news 'cause companies kept quiet instead of reporting it. And now switching to countries where the nuclear "control" is of no importance to the leaders.

Fusion will make it a bit better once it works, but there is a waste problem as well. Just on a (yet) smaller scale and easier to control. And if the control fails the reactor shuts down instantly by design. But we are not there yet, will take at least 20+ years.

An international incident or just some finger trouble at the console?

Re: Typing is not a good idea.

Upvote from me. Especially since we have actually good working session isolation since Windows Vista.

Re: Typing is not a good idea.

Of course you can memorize your simple generic passwords.

Mine are usually of this style (the "can still type it" variant):

jj0Sf0!BE7fy5m!k=@*5

C5OFkjwmXRB2SJiym(:H

1vn_sQ;feB3C-R)mIy0a

XI.Zp%ni@)A)tM!/JHKW

r=S)S%tGH/3IZ$w77MGX

:qZ2ktL2lso0ryFbP.X_

fBbY!?sOVG9x:Xp;@Mr!

2T0.ID!wfJ-e,r5aT.LD

h,UOjaIEOxr*C803nyyQ

T1b8ZVRltId2tIPhgP@!

3=huXEt.8VgNXvS/qsuT

(Y/gSJbnAi%CY?p2vvr$

ZO.iTEckF?:0:ZOPsLxn

=;-Rq0s3qUKJk1YX2a0n

jaqXy,IkH5hSzVuWQ+S4

q7cQMai-0kG;M@SXXyR:

UASn7gGT()uUQ09eFT?O

628w(dNw8_7mMjs)Ao?g

l$l$kHHnlN+N:95i7rQR

,JH-kvVpHUP)6ABDEy+K

;RG!=Z=6*X_bow,t.eeU

f;ELuLkbZ0T4xSGKHWFu

Q/Wf!*gaPWzaKLOcRJk3

w+if24ZnM;-kb)cpF(ak

hn!$Mz0ysyjgMnwV2KCM

)AQEW6fxqe,A;UNUhx6I

WNnBpnBM3wuUN8?w_ag;

)c=s$d/(Yt8+UhqGWSrp

*--x-uQVGFK*s_T,wSAe

sAh*PpvH8*SZcAlzMf70

iD=:Rm8Kg@J?ZvO_klff

EgzbxDkpR:kDWnV-3OUX

Vid6!dvGePwD9sM1tNz:

E+f*bF5lCBeiTXQVOU3w

m)1K6k/-z7(b(S!z3o)m

hsVYjQFI:10v3EteG,Nl

W.j(lc.Cz+UyYmv3.Jx=

Hoo,siPgMNfpelZ:RET2

cU(RKCz3NWlOA$Jea$+R

o(qUOR=W,Dw1xJ*-qTXD

a(SegbGC(PSwupulvA9d

5pis$yWUgO5:Im+h:P;B

?_,Xlty:+T%t.=o$2dte

Qas!j=m-cnDsdi7JlZ?Q

You memorized them? Oh, you are a special one!

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

Re: I love demands to do the impossible

Asking "What is <whatever>" is never ignorance. On the contrary: Accepting not knowing everything, including things that a obvious to others, and simply asking instead of pretending: Deserves a thumbs up.

Re: Escher prints

So they were demanding "The Fellowship Of The Ring" to be printed on A4 and still be readable... (That is the usual comparison I use).

Demand a clear specification what is considered as bad and what is considered as good. If it is not clear enough prove them it is not clear enough until they give you specification which are clear enough. Continue this circle until the universe ends.

Might have worked for the yacht owner, only waiting for the citrix video data stream instead of 20+ separate TCP connections all waiting for their answer.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Re: Oh My!

> 802.1x and radius

Costs money to implement, deploy and maintain. Including more expensive switches which are actually capable of doing it. You know the bean-counters answer to such ideas, especially since "you are here anyway therefore you must have enough time at hand".

Re: Full names please.......

In Germany "Wayne" is a short form of "Wehn interesstierts?", aka "interests who?", and therefore a form of disrespectfully saying "not of your business".

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

Re: PC

> I have received a photocopy of a diskette

On which you could have spot the problem: The version of the software they use has a known bug, and you'd send in the new version.

Re: How friggin' tough could it be to just print the words?

You mean the difference between 1, lowercase l, uppercase I, and the pipe symbol |? Depending on the font all four look the same. That happens when form wins over functionality.

Re: How friggin' tough could it be to just print the words?

Nightstand lamps.

Re: Trouble Believing It

Start with the On-Call Tag.

And then advance to to the Who-Me tag.

Worried about being replaced by a robot? Become a physicist

Re: Bone headed move

> A human brain, in contrast, has a power consumption of about 20W.

which does not take efficiency into consideration :D.

Re: Doing my bit for the little guy(gal)

Upvote deserved! Americas decline speeds up more and more. The next civil war will come. The question is: When.

No computer can handle humans as customers...

...when it comes to programming what their perfect spec and flawless outline describes.They always include every special case, and never change or add a features during implementation. And they never give in into political changes about their projects, even a government commission never fails these important steps.

A discounting disaster averted at the expense of one's own employment

Re: Amateur Hour

You were young and needed the money...

You are telling the the exact reason why Microsoft added "activation" with XP/2003. Not the private users, they don't care much about it. It's the companies they're after.

Problems for the Linux kernel NTFS driver as author goes silent

Re: Hang on a mo ...

You can always write your own filesystem driver for linux. You just won't get it into the official kernel - that is the actual topic here.

In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished

Re: I've told this one before...

> Enjoy a pint on me for the failure on my part to clarify it in the OP.

Was clear to me from your first post :D

Re: Timeout almost timed me out...

Even three seconds is short when you have a large list of similar looking phone numbers - looking away may take more than three seconds.