Posts by batt-geek

Network operator ponders building a new submarine cable – on land

i'd be more concerned about that cable crossing some tinpot dictators region who decides to add some optical splices and start selling hacker access

Reg readers have spoken: 93% back move away from Microsoft in UK public sector

agreed

i used to work for a guy that had his own very successful business - but the only piece of software he knew how to use was excel

We'd write documents / emails / etc in excel and then get his pa to transcribe these into word / outlook /etc

UK council selling the farm (and the fire station) to fund ballooning Oracle project

Re: Oracle

It's the old problem of someone "playing safe"

It used to be that no-one got fired for "buying ibm" even if said ibm kit was a steaming pile of manure

just substitute oracle for ibm ....

Oh, what a feeling: Toyota building robots that get better with practice

i suspect the big problem will be battery life - i can't imagine that robot would be operational for more than maybe 30 minutes moving around

add in any significant load to carry and that will drop dramatically, so either they will need to be tethered to a power distribution grid or they are going to need multiple units per "position" that they can rotate in as the charge depletes / is recharged

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

back in the early days of the UK's national lottery i worked for a company in bracknell that was involved with the networking for this new lottery; their datacenter was a glorified portacabin on stilts in the warehouse

Everything worked well but i remember shortly before i left that we needed to add another power circuit for a digital alpha machine.

I was down there with the sparky when he opened the large electrical distribution box at the back of the cabin; sitting in the bottom was a mug of very old, mostly dried out coffee

"i always wondered where that mug went" was all he said, and then simply carried on adding the new wiring.

needless to say i checked that distro box before it was sealed back up...

Boeing's Starliner finds yet another way to not reach space

Re: "Starliner's crew has a safe trip to the International Space Station"

agreed - if i was one of those astronauts i'd be thinking i drew the short straw here and would be considering a quick career change ... :-/

One bank's brilliant upgrade was another bank's crash

Re: Extended Data Format Crashes System

Back in my time (late 90's) it was primarily Tandem hardware running non-stop kernel; If you looked into the frames you'd find sparc processors

There was also a large number of Digital VAX and Alpha boxes running VMS

Ah the good old days...

Your trainee just took down our business and has no idea how or why

so the kid had enough privileges to take the storage offline but not enough to bring 'em back online - that in itsself is somewhat dumb to my way of thinking

but no getting away from the fact the kid should never have been let loose unsupervised...

Ban on Apple watches with blood oxygen sensors confirmed after failed appeal

it's a software mod - won't take long for someone to work out how to download the firmware (or whatever) from a fully functional watch and upload to the O2 crippled version...

Boeing abandons plans for crewed Starliner flight in 2023

Rather them than me

astronauts are supposed to be made of "the right stuff", but i have to say i think anyone riding this tin can would need to be made of "the disposable stuff"

Boeing Starliner's 1st crewed trip to the ISS delayed again over battery overheating risk

Rather them than me

With all the reported on-going issues with starliner i'd hate to be an astronaut scheduled to ride that thing; those two 'nauts have got to be thinking "we really got the short straw here!!"

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

Conservatives need a Francis Urquart to bring the party together and get 'em back on track

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Urquhart

Japanese boffins build solar-powered, remote-controlled cyborg cockroach

anyone reminded of the film "the fifth element" where the president is spied on by a camera/microphone wielding cockroach ??

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

Re: Using it wrongly

I think Khaptain has nailed it - a flaw in the system (be it inadequate software / hardware / etc) but not racial profiling...

The problem with "inadequate software / hardware / etc" is that it doesn't give someone a reason to lawyer up and make an easy few quid...