Posts by Nitromoors

UK water giant admits attackers broke into system as gang holds it to ransom

This looks like internal HR stuff not Customer data. As a Southern Water customer they aren't likely to hold much of this data on me. It's not relevant and I have not provided it.

Apple swipes left on the last Touch Bar Mac, replaces it with a pricier 14″ model

Re: Swapping Detection

Well is would have to be. Far too hard to stick with the tribe and 40 years of vmstat.

Microsoft says VBScript will be ripped from Windows in future release

Re: It's an abomination, but...

I try to avoid VBA in any spreadsheet that I will send to anyone else. That's asking for great pain.

I never found a simple built in way to format a date like this with conditional formatting, custom formatting or anything so needed a bit of VBA

Sunday the 23rd July 2023

Oh and what about finding the date of next Monday, so long as today is not a Monday?

I suppose thinking about it you could write the last line of this into every row using a vlookup or index - match, but the end result is a mile long and a greater abomination than a bit of VBA, which at least has clarity

Function conv_date(dt As Date)

ARR_extensions = Array("Error", _

"st", "nd", "rd", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", _

"th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", _

"st", "nd", "rd", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", "th", _

"st")

conv_date = Format(dt, "dddd") & " the " & Format(dt, "d") & ARR_extensions(Day(dt)) & " " & Format(dt, "mmmm") & " " & Format(dt, "yyyy")

End Function

Re: It's an abomination, but...

It will be replaced by Python fed back to Azure run in a container and piped back to you, as per the latest Excel craziness. Maybe that's a little harsh and perhaps it will be PHP. That can run on the back or front end.

So its not been updated since 2010. So what if it works. Any scripting interface is a potential vector for malware, hacking or general craziness. VBS is not elegant or typed but neither is JS. It's much easier to learn for simple processing tasks than PowerShell, which has taken coding to a place where you need to understand how your .ps script works before you can understand how it works. But, I suppose that won't matter when ChatGPT generates all your code for you, and then tests it and validates it.

A recent re-coding of a data extraction and manipulation routine that I ported from VBS to PS with a move from ODBC to a Rest API trebled the size of the code. The data extraction was simpler but dealing with all those pesky edge cases and exceptions was much more verbose. And, that's without all the extra comments needed so that some poor person might have a hope of maintaining it later on. The result did however score 10/10 on the Microsoft Coding Woke Scale.

Your mileage may vary.

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

BT v Kelly

No, BT staff don't make mistakes like that anymore as they don't exist. They all work for Kelly's. Who know what will happen when FTTP is the norm. You cant test that with a lineman's phone.

The Stonehenge of PC design, Xerox Alto, appeared 50 years ago this month

Missed Links

Well that admission just goes to show that Jobs really was a man of Form over Content!

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

What is a Unix?

Well, I have seen a huge evolution in Unix over wide range of versions from Unix V7 with BSD enhancement which I ran on a Fortune 32:16 in 1984, SCO, Slackware Linux (Kernel .99beta), Red Hat and CentOs even Mitel Unix on a VOIP switch ending with Raspian OS on a variety of PI's in my retirement. Then there are embedded OS's on switches and routers mobile phones etc. So what is Unix? It's a tricky one.

I suppose the only sensible answer is does it pass the Duck Test, in this case the Duck being the environment described in K&R The C Programming Language.

I suppose a few essentials are:

/dev

/etc

/bin

and mtab, fstab, a kernel and a login prompt. Not required the Mount command with a syntax you can never quite guess on a new machine

Other desirable features a boot screen that scrolls to fast to see, and gives you processor speed estimated in bogomips.

Does the VMWare hypervisor count, it certainly looks quite a bit Unixly, but then so did Netware4 under the hood.

I have never seen it on an Arduino/Atmega328 but maybe that's stretching versatility too far.

Dev's code manages to topple Microsoft's mighty SharePoint

Re: Exchange

Lots of hidden limits in Exchange and Outlook.

The length of a BCC field and contact list. Both had (had?) a limit around 7,000 characters, after which they fail in non helpful way.

From a user perspective the problem is not the limit but that it's not related to how many addresses you have but the string length.

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

You don't have to like it to appreciate it.

Last job I did after 50 years of being involved in most things IT was to write some PS scripts to read a MySQL database via ODBC for people holding certain posts and create as needed accounts in the online Active Directory and apply SharePoint folder permissions depending on the post. Email the new user and the sysadmin, also remove persons or change perms as the posts changed.

More recently I was asked to change the data source to a REST API returning JSON when the database moved off prem. Easy and quick.

Try doing that in bash or cmd.exe.

It was about 30 lines of functional code by the time it was nice and maintainable for a non programmer sysadmin.

I could have done it in:

PERL - Ugh. Very powerful and I loved it when we were both young, but sadly the romance faded.

.Net 300 lines

c# 450 lines

PYTHON never did get the hang of those white spaces and tabs and far to prone to getting messed up by said sysadmins.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

At least they did not leave it with

rm-rf /*

lurking on the command line.

ISS air leakage fixed in time for crew handover, thanks to floating teabag

It would have to be the ubiquirous Lipton's Yellow Label. Freely available in every country I have visited.

5G mast set aflame in leafy Liverpool district, half an hour's walk from Penny Lane

Re: To be clear ...

If 5G or anyG masts were a vital public service needed for the summoning of ambulances then why are there so many parts of the country where no or next to no communication is possible. 99% Coverage is 99% of populous areas not 99% of the terra firma.

Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...

Re: To be clear ...

I think the likelihood of a majority of meeting hosts successfully managing a group key is a small round number - or at least for my wife or user base, all of whom are now zooming along without a licence to drive.

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

Re: The most simple way is not mentioned here?

That is a very poor solution. It requires the customer desktop to be up and running. not hung, rebooted or shutdown by accident. It's just about OK for a one of or a fudge for some small scale software issue such as a product that still need XP, but as a corporate business continuity strategy it should be a sacking offence.

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

Re: Wrong Buttons...

That would be a BT Meridian (a Nortel OEM) then. You had to load an overlay to list a port feature, and then another to change it and then re load the first to check it was as desired.

However the Mitel which replaced it has a ' point 'n drool' interface which simplifies things a bit, but it still requires a Masters in TELCO Speak.