* Posts by Acme Tech Support

12 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2018

Wells Fargo fires employees accused of faking keyboard activity to pretend to work

Acme Tech Support

I use a software mouse jiggler program, only if I need to leave a PC running unattended for a while and I don't want the tree hugging power (saving?) mad son of the boss admin putting it to sleep with his group policies that he is "too busy" to change, so I have to do things like this to do my job!

I didn't touch a thing – just some cables and a monitor – and my computer broke

Acme Tech Support

Re: Yeah, sure. Nothing changed. Pinky promise.

At the hospital I work at, I'm convinced that we get invaded by invisible little pixies that come in overnight and break / change stuff. No one ever sees anything, as "It was like that when I got here!" or "A patient did it!"

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Acme Tech Support

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Reminds me of a PC I built recently. The last time I had built one was a Pentium 2, nice brown coloured main board, white case, different coloured cables for reset and power connections

The new one, black case, black cables, black main board, black heatsink on the memory. It did have a perspex panel on the side - tinted black, so couldn't see inside it!

A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?

Acme Tech Support

Re: 2 years with a dry joint, running an engine testbed

No, I was in Dorset

Acme Tech Support

Re: 2 years with a dry joint, running an engine testbed

I just mentioned a capacitor story! That was an Intecolor terminal too!

We're you in the UK? The company I worked for imported them from the US.

The other thing was that they used the cheapest possible IC sockets which became faulty, so often replace them too

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

Acme Tech Support

Re: Better than Dangerous

Some of them yes I agree. Shoot some bloke in a spacesuit with ship mounted heavy weapons and he's immune? Buy a spacesuit for 150K, more expensive than some of the basic ships!

I found with the other sequels that they just weren't as much fun and I didn't get the same I'm flying my own spaceship feel. Even though you had realistic planets you could land on and much better graphics.

On the other hand, refueling from stars watching the corona and waiting for the fuel tank to fill up.

Asteroid mining - find it relaxing watching the drones collecting minerals, and where you find a rock with fissures and can blow it apart...

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

Acme Tech Support

Re: The company now has an estimated half a million disks in stock

Think that was for Windows 3.1x? MT was probably twice that.

NT 4 anyway, not sure about earlier versions

LAN traffic can be wirelessly sniffed from cables with $30 setup, says researcher

Acme Tech Support

Re: I thought LAN cables were shielded

Used to work with access control systems. Rather than call in proper security installers, they would call in a sparkie - who would then be on the phone to us.....

Part of the software (originally for Win3.1x) made use of the tab key. If I told him to press the tab key, there was a stoney silence, wait a few seconds then "it's the big key upper left next to the Q", I would recline the chair, feet up on my desk and just take it easy for a bit.....

ZX Spectrum reboot promising – steady now – 28MHz of sizzling Speccy speed now boasts improved Wi-Fi

Acme Tech Support

www.crashonline.org.uk

and

https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/magazines/crash/85/0/1991/2/0

I won't bother hunting and reporting more Sony zero-days, because all I'd get is a lousy t-shirt

Acme Tech Support

Re: Really? A shirt?

Still have my Windows 2000 System Builders t-shirt around somewhere..... Covered in paint and oil....

How an over-zealous yank took down the trading floor of a US bank

Acme Tech Support

Re: Why ...Press F1 to continue... was stupid

Had to set up some display screens, so used some old PCs that were laying about. Didn't want anyone messing about with them, so disconnected the keyboard. And get the error message come up.

My solution was to remove one of the back plates., take the keyboard apart and remove the PCB. Wrap it up in tape and feed it through the gap and fasten it inside the PC. The cable would still be connected to the PS2 socket so it would detect a keyboard and boot up. Added advantage is that it saves space!