* Posts by ITMA

1033 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2019

India delays planned space station and moon base by five years

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why stop at 5 years?

"They sure did. Because there was no alternative. Computers and robotics in the 60/70s were nowhere near as advanced as they are today"

Yes there was.

Apart from physically "walking on the moon" the entire Apollo mission from launch to splash down could have been run automatically via Mission Control and the two Apollo Guidance Computers - one in the CSM and one in the LM.

They never did a fully automated lunar landing for one reason only - astronauts egos wouldn't permit it. In fact a fully automated "test landing" was discussed but killed because if the first Apollo LM landed with nobody onboard, the American public would rightly have said - "why are spending all the money to send men when a machine can do it?"

Launch was handled entirely by the IM computer in the Saturn V and Mission Control. The "astronauts" were just passengers, or as the oft used expression so aptly put it, "spam in a can".

Getting a man on the moon - i.e. Apollo - was all about beating the Soviet Union in space for political reasons.

Voyager 1 & 2 were designed and built using 60's/70's technology and BOTH are still exploring.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-they-now/

The first space shuttle computers (five per shuttle) used core memory! How advanced the technology is nowhere near as important for spacecraft as reliability and ability to "harden" them for use in space.

Though I entirely agree with your point about robotic spacecraft. You didn't clearly state the biggest disadvantage to using humans - the expect to come back,alive.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: cue the wailing

Wooha - Vista and Capable in the same sentence.... There's a novelty.

As for the "cue the wailing" what can I say. Compared to the things you can do through control panel, "settings" is a crock of shite.

Microsoft rolls out one Teams app to rule them all

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Blah blah blah....

And I bet they STILL haven't fixed that stupid security hole where when you click on "Sign out" it DOES NOT!

There are frequent instances when all you have to do is click on a user name/email address and it signs you in without asking for so much as a password AFTER you've signed out.

Microsoft closes Windows 11 upgrade loophole in latest Insider build

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Flame

That's not a "I'm pissed off" icon.

It's a burning bush.... :)

Windows 11 Insider preview brings new Sandbox features and fatter FAT32

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Devil

Re: Regedit bug?

"Has someone been needlessly fiddling to make things 'better'?"

I say unto you.... Windows 11 !!!

NASA pushes decision on bringing crew back in Starliner to the end of August

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Devil

Re: Only

What? No IEEE-488?

How about 20mA loop?

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Boeing suits can't be used in a SpaceX vehicle and vice-versa.

"Say, basic coms, oxegen, posibly heating/cooling, fits in the seat.....anything else?"

Dare I say it - waste... Just in case you are stuck in them for longer than may be "comfortable". On the grounds either all suits have it, or none.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Boeing suits can't be used in a SpaceX vehicle and vice-versa.

I've listened to that and I didn't hear any great explanation or arugment for what you postulate - i.e. that using a common connector stops multi-use of suits and innovation.

In fact a little later they argue a compelling case for standardisation, or at least a degree of suit core compatibility, between Orion and Artemis suits in case something unforseen means you have to use one vehicle's suits in the other vehicle.

If I recall, the last person who publiclity threw standards out the window because they "stifled innovation", things didn't work out too well for when his tubular carbon fibre sub imploded.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Boeing suits can't be used in a SpaceX vehicle and vice-versa.

And there are a whole bunch of standards for On Board vechicle Diagnostics:

OBD-II, SAE J1979-2, ISO 15031, ISO 15765-4:2011

I'm afraid your BMW/Tesla "diagnostic station" analogy doesn't quite stand up.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Boeing suits can't be used in a SpaceX vehicle and vice-versa.

There is a difference between independent designs to minimise the risk of space suits (or other "item") from different contractors having the same design flaws - and designing ones which are totally incompatible.

It smacks of not just the Apollo 13 CO2 scrubbers - square peg/round hole - but also the early days of railways with too many tragedies caused by "Not invented here, we are not using that" mentality.

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

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Devil

Re: I misspoke about Google and their work hours. I regret my error

And just perhaps Google's "poor showing" in AI is because it is being forced on people who just don't want it and find it is shite, gets in the way and is extremely annoying - yes I'm talking about "Google AI overview"

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

It makes a lot of sense if you add "atives" onto the end of lax :)

It would certainly help explain Copilot.

LLM-driven C-to-Rust. Not just a good idea, a genie eager to escape

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Destroying the Patterns Needed by LLMs

Hang on....

Let me write that down in my software protection patent application.... LOL

Users call on Microsoft to update Outlook's friendly name feature

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: "more than 100 votes"

I suspect Microsoft have had rather more than 100 votes along the lines of:

"Fuck off with forcing out new shite features like focussed fucking inbox set to ON"

yet they take no notice what so ever.

Microsoft Teams decouples from Office 365 suite globally

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Devil

Re: Word and Cloud

Or put in more words:

Go to the File menu/tab in Word, go to Options in the bottom left.

In the box that appears find "Save" on the left and click on it. There you will find a whole bunch of options to control where it saves to including turning Autosave to the cloud OFF (at the top of the pane on the right in the save options).

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: As posted 4 months ago, verbatim.

And the full screen bullshit screen about it needs the "Maybe later" button removing and replacing with a:

"Fuck off and die right now""

button.

But then the same applies to Copilot and Cortana before it.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Just say NO!

Like that line displayed during a Windows 10 install:

"Leave everything to us...."

You have got to be fucking joking!?!?!?!?

It is like being asked to sit back and relax while a blind barber with the shakes tries to give you a shave with a cut throat razor....

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Just say NO!

Microsoft are just on one long seemingly endless drive to grab customers' data and make them cash slaves to Redmond.

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: MBA culture replaced engineering culture

I'd profer that they need Feynman's classic line tattooed across their foreheads:

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"

School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Too many people never use the hand gel....

I use it before and after using the touch screen when ever I go.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

"It also notes that the school previously used fingerprint scanners for meals... but I suppose they had post-COVID hygiene concerns regarding the contact patch"

Which has always puzzled me why so many GP surgeries have "touch screen" booking in systems even before COVID.

And I noticed this on CRB Cunningham's website:

"It's just fast! Better than fingerprints - School Business Manager, Kingsmeadow School"

That sort of says it all - "School Business Manager".

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Ah.... <smug mode>

Seconds? Thirds? Fourths?

Have you ever had school dinners?

AI models face collapse if they overdose on their own output

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Devil

Re: "using AI-generated datasets to train future models may generate gibberish"

Sounds like AI is about ready to move into politics.....

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

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Devil

Re: Holidays

Leyden jars.... :)

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Holidays

What?

No Faraday cage to keep your backups in?

Shame on you.

Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: In our office it was Quake

And what a great "network stress testing" tool Quake was/is LOL

Ah.... But did you install the "bombs" wad pak and neglect to tell one particular colleague - who then wondered what the f*** was going on when he was hit by homing missiles and gib gun rounds from everyone else as we strained to keep straight faces.

Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Major crisis averted - just

Or worse - those that rely on their phones for everything including making payments.

The number of times I, along with others, have been stuck behind someone faffing about with their phone to try and make a contactless payment.

CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Clusterf*ck or what?

What a surprise - that part of their main page has been removed LOL

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: The fault's with Microsoft

That is rather disingenuous.

Anyone remember the unleaded fuel additive debacle several years ago where drivers would pull into (typically a supermarket) petrol station, fill up, then find their car majorly malfunctioned?

Yes the engine stopped working, but that is only because of the crap additive in the fuel. You can't blame the manufacturer of the engine for that, they way you are blaming Microsoft for CrowdStrike's monumental f*ckup.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Clusterf*ck or what?

I find it both amusing and ironic that on the main page of CrowdStrike's website they have a pic of some SciFi baddy (looks like it is taken from some game art) along with the prophetic words:

"62 minutes could bring your business down.

That’s the average time it takes an adversary to land and move laterally through your network. When your data, reputation, and revenue are at stake, trust the pioneer in adversary intelligence."

Oh how right they are!

https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-gb/

Perhaps they should have replaced "an adversary" with "us".

Kaspersky challenges US government to put up or shut up about Kremlin ties

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Who @amajadedcynicaloldfart

With such poorly posed questions as that, I'm not surprsed you don't work for anyone LOL.

What was that question even supposed to mean?

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Never mind the alleged Kremlin links - we dumped Kaspersky years ago because it became very buggy bloatware.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

But your "pissant tiny one man band outfit" as you so ungraciously put it, is very unlikely to be using CrowdFuck on their PCs.

If they are, it is more likely to be because they trusted and outsourced it to some "all knowing" IT consultancy who put CrowdFuck on their PCs.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Pre-emptive threat assessment

Taken directly from CrowdStrike's UK website:

"62 minutes could bring your business down.

That’s the average time it takes an adversary to land and move laterally through your network. When your data, reputation, and revenue are at stake, trust the pioneer in adversary intelligence."

Oh how right they are!

https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-gb/

Although they should have replaced "an adversary" with "us"

Europe's largest council could face £12M manual audit bill after Oracle project disaster

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: how different can councils be

Ooooh - another big government IT project!

That's is going to work out sooooo well.

Windows Notepad gets spell check. Only took 41 years

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Great for witches and warlocks...

Whei wood I ned a speeling chucker? Argh yuu seying my triping is roobish?

P.S. can it sell check Geordie?

Users rage as Microsoft announces retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Can I nominate CoPilot for immediate deprecation on the same grounds?

Windows 11 is closing the gap on Windows 10

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Countdown to the end

Classic real world computing...

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Countdown to the end

Windows 8.1 !!!!!!

Maintaining the musical theme (ish):

"What have you done, what have you done, what have you done to deserve this (Windows 8.1)?"

64% of people not happy about idea of AI-generated customer service

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

For me, if I phone up ANY organisation it is because I want to talk to a REAL LIVE PERSON.

Every time I get through instead to some labyrinthian automated phone menu, chat bot or, worst of all effing "A.I.", all that tells me is the organisation's attitude is "f*ck off, go away, we don't care and don't want to have anything to do with you."

Fine - instant lost business.

Chinese Gen AI researchers snagged more patents than everyone else combined since 2013

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Yup...

Now can I have my gold sovereigns back that you borrowed?

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Take with a pinch of salt.

Rough translation:

"You can file as many patent applications as you like - it doesn't mean they will be granted. Until a patent is granted, it is not a patent. A lot of Chinese applications are likely to fail as they are crap".

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

The problem with patents, and this has always been THE problem is this:

A patent is only as strong as your abilitity to defend it. That, very basically, comes down to "how deep are your pockets?"

Like a lot of things in (non criminal) law, those with the deepest pockets (the most money) can ultimately win if they can keeping litigation going until the opposition run out of money.

ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Keane Reeves

And those bloddy speeling chuckers never sav yoo from theeem.

ChatGPT wrongly insists Trump-Biden CNN debate had 1 to 2-minute delay

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

And now the Supreme Court ruling has effectively made the president "king".

I thought you buggers started a war with us to throw our King (George III) out of your country, only to now put (potentially) Trump in his place!

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

There's a difference?

ISS 'nauts told to duck and cover after dead Russian sat sprays space junk

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Devil

Floating and falling are not exactly the same - unless you class falling as "floating at speed in one direction"

Microsoft hits snooze again on security certificate renewal

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Something else screwed up today

The didn't even bother plugging anything into the electric guitars sometimes...

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Something else screwed up today

IIRC for most of its run Top Of The Pops was "miming" to a recording - including the instruments. Hardly what one would call "authentic"...

'Skeleton Key' attack unlocks the worst of AI, says Microsoft

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Somewhat chilling

As good as the "chat" Doolittle and Pinback have with Bomb #20 in Dark Star?

https://www.cinemah.com/altri/war/carpent.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk