* Posts by Mast1

191 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2019

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September 16, 1992, was not a good day to be overly enthusiastic about your job

Mast1

2nd mouse

(a) around here, the third mouse gets the carcase.

Mast1

Re: Regomiser a bit confused?

Door mat ? (As green horns are sometimes treated)

Yahoo Japan strives for universal passwordless authentication

Mast1

Am I naive

"Users are encouraged to use the same authentication method on all their devices," jumped out at me.

So "security through obscurity" is relegated from even being a second line of defense ?

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

Mast1

Not lost in translation

Long before 'tinternet, I was in an office with a Swiss-French visitor speaking to his base on the phone. SInce it was dialect French, there was no impolite eavesdropping going on, until he asked a colleague to look something up on "le floppy disque".

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Mast1
Coat

Re: Ethernet woes

He was obviously used to dealing with a slow garage. Could not wait for his carriage to be returned......

Mast1
Coat

Full names please.......

The Regomiser seems to be missing a few tricks these days. Surely the IT guy's real name was Ben D Cable........

An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile

Mast1

Re: This one's unintentional

Met regularly with in 8.3 file-naming conventions.

Back in the mists, I programmed a (VERY) rudimentary "statistics analysis" package in Fortran on a VAX 11/750.

So to be concise and succinct I shortened both words to four letters each, and then concatenated to the required 8 letters, and, like OP, with no intention of crudity.... until I handed it over to a human tester to find the bugs. He just lengthened the pronunciation of the first /a/ of the second word and raised an eyebrow.

Filename changed pretty quickly.

You can buy a company. You can buy a product. Common sense? Trickier

Mast1
Facepalm

Re: 'twas ever thus

Will tell this story against my young-teenage self (with no mentor, and no "how to" resources easily available).

Trying to build my first two-transistor electronic circuit on Veroboard (lines of copper parallel to one edge of board, with 0.1"-spaced holes drilled in as a grid, diameter narrow enough to ensure continuity), I did not realise that I had to cut the tracks between where I had used them for different nodes in the circuit.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

Mast1

optional extras.....

You can get sound modules for the inside of your car linked to the engine speed. Then you can select Rolls-Royce or Maserati, depending on your fancy (or age), played through the in-car entertainment.

Perhaps self-driving cars could have a similar selector feature but by the type of driver steterotypically driving the brand. See El Reg passim about certain brands of motorcars not needing indicator lights or rear view mirrors because the drivers do not seem to use them.

Arm's $66bn sale to Nvidia is off: Deal collapses after world's competition regulators raise concerns

Mast1

It won't be that astronomic: you already will have the arm, just need to throw in the leg as well.

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

Mast1

Re: Step outside

Try Lisbon, about 30 years ago, in a taxi with shot rear suspension cornering on damp cobbles: more of a slide than a drive. The added irony was that I had recently signed a life insurance policy whose wording had asked me to vouch, for the selected premium level, that I did not indulge in dangerous activities/hobbies such as parachuting etc. After Lisbon, I felt that their list was a bit short on real life experiences, but did not disabuse them of their ignorance.

Russia's naval exercise near Ireland unlikely to involve cable-tapping shenanigans

Mast1
Mushroom

Re: ... the area is rarely visited by boats with location-transmitting AIS equipment switched on ...

Well, there was that time when the Russian navy mistook a bunch of trawlers for an armed Navy and opened fire. One suspects that their navy's talents of identification have improved a bit since 1904 (under new managment). Look up "Dogger Bank Incident".

Bouncing cheques or a bouncy landing? All in a day's work for the expert pilot

Mast1

Re: In the pilot's defense...

Yes, very "interesting". Just look at the direction of twist of a motorbike accelerator. You open it up fast, underestimating the power available, fall back in the seat, hold on tighter to stop falling off, and intertia does the rest. Positive feedback.

Just speaking on behalf of my brother who did that as a learner on a BMW 650 single....... He went off backwards, leaving the bike to slap its way down the road until friction took over. Fortunately it had "sissy bars" on either side of the block. The instructor's observations in his earpiece are NSFW.

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

Mast1

Re: Crazy tax rates

We do it in the UK, but use ship loads (carrried by dirty oil burners?) of pelletised wood from the USA and feed it into the national grid. Currently ca 3 GW of it (Drax 2).

Pop quiz: The network team didn't make your change. The server is in a locked room. What do you do?

Mast1

Re: Under the floor

Many years back, I watched a team come in to install a firedoor on my corridor. Did a very nice job, from concrete floor right up to ceiling tiles. Once they had re-instated and left, I went to the house services manager to ask if it was supposed to be a fire door. I then pointed out that there was a 30cm void above the ceiling tiles running the entire length of the corridor. There seems to have been a flaw in the tendering process....... Cue the return of the workmen.

For those right-ponders, think of how the the (1987?) Kings Cross fire (specifically the smoke) spread up the escalators.

Planning for power cuts? That's strictly for the birds

Mast1

Re: I say it's plausible

Ah, are you say that it was missing a "claws" ? The person drafting it was obviously not very "talonted".

Fugitive mafioso evaded cops for two decades until he was spotted on Google Street View

Mast1

Re: So he's lived on the run for 20 years

Possibly would take the sweetie in the "deferred gratification" test ?

A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'

Mast1

Re: Spike?

Ie screwdriver causes large current to flow in inductive load (all wiring has some inductance) which is then disconnected promptly by rapidly expanding cloud of vaporising metal. L.dI/dt does the rest.

Mast1

Re: Screwdrivers in wrong places.

I was "trained" that there were 3 reactions possible when carrying a replacement CRT and accidentally touching the anode cap:

(1) Idiot : you drop it immediately below you and shower your legs with imploding glass. (pedant alert: yes it IMplodes: the EXploding is the rebound after the implosion).

(2) Sensible : as you drop it you throw it as far away as possible so that imploding glass does not shred your legs.

(3) Macho : you stand there and think "I can take it : what is 15 kV?"

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Mast1

Re: Nice to hear that he survived ...

This goes back many years (>60). My father's narrated version of that jape was to play "carrier landings" with the (army) mess dining table. Most of the assembly fitted around the side so as to lift the table, while a hapless person did a running dive to try & "land" on said table. Of course the table "pitched" in the "wild sea". It was not uncommon for a person to pitch into the end of the table rather than on to it...........

Smart things are so dumb because they take after their makers. Let's fix that

Mast1
Joke

Re: What are error messages for?

Weren't the chances of restoring normality any time soon determined 40+ years ago as infinitely improbable ?

Reviving a classic: ThinkPad modder rattles tin to fund new motherboard for 2008's T60 and T61 series of laptops

Mast1

Re: Display

Upgraded my T60 to Linux Mint XFCE 20 earlier this year. Browses tolerably well maxed out at 3GB DRAM, and with an SSD. Definitley not a stroppy teenager.

LoRa to the Moon and back: Messages bounced off lunar surface using off-the-shelf hardware

Mast1

Health & Safety would love it: at least it would be safer than mercury delay line storage.

https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/edsac-computer-employs-delay-line-storage/

Extra terrestrials might see it as another piece of space "junk"......

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

Mast1

Re: Fired a missile that fell into the ocean

Ah, the red-hot poker as-a-weapon trick. Dates back to at least Edward II in 1327, allegedly.

https://thehistoryvault.co.uk/the-mystery-of-edward-iis-death/

Mast1

"Belgium: where the British army plays its away matches". Quote by Jeremy Clarkson (for the left-ponders, a petrol-head reporter with opinions on almost everything).

A lightbulb moment comes too late to save a mainframe engineer's blushes

Mast1

Re: It can take a remarkably long time to notice that the alert mailer has stopped working.

Many moons back, a work colleague narrated a story of a site where they tested generator sets by attaching them to an electric motor and spinning them up. When the bearings seized, the set pulled itself out of the floor bolts and rolled through the wall, ... and down an embankment onto a railway track. Made a change from the usual "Please can I have my ball back ? "

Mast1

Re: It can take a remarkably long time to notice that the alert mailer has stopped working.

Allegedly, when Rolls Royce were testing Merlin engines to see what went bang first, (and hence find the weak points) the technicians used to doze while sitting next to the rigs running the engines...... they used to wake up when the engine sound changed.

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Mast1

Re: Solves one problem relating to the end of the world though...

Ahhh, remember the cause of the Krikit wars.......

Obligatory HHGTTG reference.

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

Mast1

Re: Punch cards?

Well there is always the future tense use of "punched cards" as in "to be punched"......

which gets abbreviated.

Years of development, millions of lines of code, and Android can't even run a toilet

Mast1

I diagnose acute urinary retention in the Android.

The WEEE directive only comes into effect at the end of its life.

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

Mast1

Re: Innovative solutions

I thought that was the location that minimised back-splash......

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

Mast1

Re: Question: 10MB/s per Channel?

Mid-80s, the BBC were playing with general distribution of 625-line colour TV around 70 Mb/s. 34Mb/s was used as the final stage of distribution to the transmitter, when no more coding was anticipated. And then along came HDTV, in its studio format requiring around 1 Gbps.

Macmillan best-biscuit list unexpectedly promotes breakfast cereal to treat status

Mast1

Re: Oreos

I first met the word as the name of the upcoming band in the Streisand/Kristofferson re-make of "A star is born". A script line that would not "cut the biscuit" nowadays: spoken by the compere introducing Barbara Streisand centre stage between two of the "three degrees".

Mast1
Coat

Re: I am offended

Chocolate covered bourbon ? I thought that would be called a chocolate liqueur, definitely not a biscuit.

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Mast1

'Fessing up to design flaws........

We had an office-quality big-name inkjet printer. It kept on saying that the ink cartridges were empty, even the day after you put a new one in.

Pull the cartridge out and give it a shake to hear lots of ink sloshing around. A web search eventually found the fault: a strong spring had been attached to a pillar in a plastic moulding. Insufficient webbing at the pillar base led to stress concentration and plastic flow, so the ink detection method failed.

A totally poor design which had not led to a product recall. But they did sell us the re-designed plastic part : cost £80. Nowhere near the cost of the wasted ink cartridges (opened prematurely).

Yup, we were fooled once. But we stopped buying printers from that manufacturer.

Manufacturers need to appreciate more the cost of a trashed reputation.

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

Mast1

Re: "Why solar panels are not mandated as part of the new builds is lost on me."

Suggest you look at https://gridwatch.co.uk/

And find the graph marked Last Year (Day Averages).

Look for the yellow line amid all the other colours.

From a northern European perspective, the chances of functionally charging your car on solar power between October and March are negligible.

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Mast1
Joke

Re: Hands up

Wow, they were big cutters, 8 floors long : how do you get them to open in a riser ?

Mast1

Re: Less poor wiring than poor building

Cheaper version of this. My office backs onto a lecture classroom. The wall is plasterboard & studs, but with offset studs for better sound isolation (decouples the walls). I complain that I can hear the bass of every lecture (despite loudspeaker not being mounted on that wall) , so during re-vamp of the classroom they put in a third, offset stud wall.

I can still hear the lecture, so do a bit of prodding myself.

Yup: stud walls go up to beyond the (early 2000) ceiling tiles. But only as far as the 1950s ceiling studwork for attaching an earlier set of now-removed acoustic tiles. Sealing that gap sorted the problem. (too thin for students to crawl through to escape the lecture)

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

Mast1

Take the long view

Agreed, but eg railways: 150 years ago when the (UK) royal family travelled by train.

Post COVID you virtually have to pay someone to get on a train.

Or the other way round: 200 years ago you had to be poor to be press-ganged to get onto a sailing ship.

Nowadays sailing is you a wealthier man's sport.

Yes, take the long view. YMMV.

What job title would YOU want carved on your gravestone? 'Beloved father, Slayer of Dragons, Register of Domains'

Mast1

Gone to his head

In contrast to what was recorded on his tombstone as "the eccentric resident of Dorking" who was buried, at his own request, head down on nearby Box Hill.

A hotline to His Billness? Or a guard having a bit of a giggle?

Mast1

Re: Data sheets: an expression of hope rather than fact

"book, not a sheet"

How about "a compendium" : a very nice but under-used word.

Mast1

Re: the (painful) <insert company name> system

Last century : Using a new analogue chip, I found that in order for it to work, I had to have two conditions satisfied, rather than just one, as the data sheet had implied.

Phone call to technical support, UK importer :

Me : I have an issue with a new chip of yours. The XXXX.

Them : Oh, have not heard of problems with that.

Me : I would like to report a bug

Them: We do not have a procedure for that.

"Data sheets: an expression of hope rather than fact." (source : a friend)

Pre-orders open for the Mini PET 40/80, the closest thing to Commodore's classic around

Mast1
Joke

Re: OK, but why?

Don't want to repeat the "waiting experience" ?

Forget the processor speed, most software design means it always will be there.

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again

Mast1
Joke

Re: A Story about Magic

Co-axial cable .........

Mast1

The knob......

I have heard rumours of people building research kit with the useful knobs hidden away and the front panel populated with mostly functionless knobs. This kept the people who did not keep their hands in their pockets 'amused', while allowing the designer/builder to keep it in a known state.

The Audacity: Audio tool finds new and exciting ways to annoy contributors with a Contributor License Agreement

Mast1

Re: Peculiar move

Moved to Linux Mint 20 recently and brought my legit copy of CoolEdit across. Works under Wine and also in 32 bit audio mode. And no "Contact your software vendor for an updated version".

20 year old software that does as much as I need and does it well: I feel that I owe something to the original author for keeping me away from Audition.

Something went wrong but we won't tell you what it is. Now, would you like to take out a premium subscription?

Mast1

Blame it on the COVID.......

Related strand of "unhelpful help".

Have been trying to order parts for a child's toy.

UK importer has had them out of stock for at least 3 months, and offer to send email when back in stock: no reply.

Recently their website is showing signs of activity, in the form of updates on service levels post COVID lockdown. I decide an alternative approach is to check on a possibly compatible part before ordering.

"Phone us" : Get through to answering machine, even during the hours the message says that they are offering telephone support. Leave message and get no reply even several days later.

"Email us" : Answering machine says they will reply next day, but offers no address.

Go to website to find page with "Email: [Blank]", as well as the same telephone number.

At least they have not got my money (yet).

Wi-Fi devices set to become object sensors by 2024 under planned 802.11bf standard

Mast1

Re: what could possibly ever go wrong

Look at previous methods of imaging with WiFi, eg this from 2013 :

http://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf

And that was using 2.4 GHz.

BTW Why use of public Wi-Fi when mobile small-quantity data contracts are pretty cheap nowadays and the downside of MitM is all too apparent ? Just asking.

NASA sets the date for first helicopter flight on another planet – and the craft will carry a piece of history

Mast1
Black Helicopters

Re: Flightpath

First they will have to wake up the air-traffic controllers.

So is the piece of the Wright Flyer your ${HOME_DELIVERY_SUPERMARKET} substitute for the lemon-scented hand wipes ?

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