Posts by I don't know, stop asking me.

Einstein Probe finds two stars that have spent 40 million years taking turns eating each other

Thanks for the link.

It's so hard to keep up as a non-astronomer. ;-)

> the white dwarf is around 120 percent the mass of our Sun and approaching the Chandrasekhar limit at which it will implode into an even denser neutron star or go full supernova.

Wait, doesn't a star need approx. 8M before it can go supernova?

Panic at the Cisco tech, thanks to ancient IOS syntax helper that outsmarted itself

Re: Context matters

At least VMS would not *execute* an ambiguous command.

IIRC three characters were generally (always?) unique in VMS/DCL. But it's been well over 2 decades since I last worked with it...

No, I can't help – you called the wrong helpdesk, in the wrong place, for the wrong platform

> My work number is off until the second my backside hits the desk chair at exactly (for given values of exactly) 0730, and then on until I lock the server room door at 1630 on the nail, 8 hours later.

So your server room is in a different time zone than your desk chair?

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: Common-Sense Failure

That is why any sane company uses wrist-mounted terminals for jobs like this.

Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, and Buran

Re: More Great Technology Museums in Swabia

If I am not mistaken, there is a Dornier 31 in Unterschleissheim as well.

Re: Are those Entry Prices right?

I believe the 2-day ticket includes the IMAX show at Sinnsheim, for which you have to pay separately with the day tickets.

Not sure if there was an IMAX theatre as well in Speyer, since I have not been there for about a decade.

Innocent techie jailed for taking hours to fix storage

Working hour restrictions only exist for a very limited amount of professions. Professional pilots and truck-/bus-drivers are the only ones that come to mind right now, but there are probably some others.

AFAIK the penalties are fines only, not incarceration.

Note that penalties for employers who force or willingly allow people to exceed working hour restrictions, are much more severe than for the employees. As it should be.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

> Stories about one branch or another being able to drink the other branch under the table (or country vs. country, etc.) have been part of military lore since Sumer and Elam were at odds 4,700 years ago or thereabouts.

Impossible. The table was not invented until about 200 years later.

FAA gives SpaceX a bunch of homework to do before Starship flies again

Re: Moon landing

> Theres no way rockets will be reusable and able to launch from a bare surface of the moon

You do realise that that is exactly what they did six times between 1969 and 1972?

Microsoft veteran on how to blue screen your way to better testing

Re: "PS/2 keyboard support turned up in Windows 2000, USB keyboards were added with Vista in 2007"

> PS/2 keyboards were the norm when Windows 1.0 came out

Windows 1.0 predate the PS/2 keyboard by 2 years.

DIN 41524 plug keyboards were the prevailing standard in 1985.

GPS interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry

Re: WTF did people do before GPS?

> This is still the main approach to navigation for light aircraft and the only method allowed in an exam.

Yean, right up until you start your instrument training.

the vast majority of commercial flight is under IFR.

Sysadmin's favorite collection of infallible utilities failed … foully

I think I agree here.

The last time I defragged a disk, it was an MFM disk (or possibly RLL).

Since IDE took over (and then ATA etc.), there has hardly ever been a need to do so. So we're talking about very early 90s probably, firmly in the DOS / Windows 3.1 era.

Lost your luggage? That's nothing – we just lost your whole flight!

> Sounds like MS SQL... One of the few major databases that don't have a mandatory WHERE clause on update/delete level commands.

Or Oracle. Or DB2. Or Postgresql.

Actually, I don't think I ever encountered a database with mandatory where clause on update/delete.

After reading all these comments, I am flabbergasted nobody seems to be using transactions. A simple rollback would undo the damage.

Anyone using autocommit should not be allowed near a production environment.

Any database not supporting transactions, has no business being a production environment.

Any company not using transactions, should not be in business.

No, no, no! Disco joke hit bum note in the rehab center

> I use the monophonic "Nokia Tune" on my Motorola. Nobody else uses it anymore.

Hi there, I am Nobody.

LibreOffice 7.6 arrives: Open source stalwart is showing its maturity

Re: long-form writers...

I mostly agree, having used Word since 4.x (4.1 I think) on DOS, and before that WordPerfect and WordStar.

Addmittedly, I am not a professional writer, more a typical business user, I think.

Word 95 had every conceivable feature that 99% of user would ever need, and more. Just like Google Docs (is it still called that?) has today.

Word 97 only added more unnecessary stuff, which did not improve the user experience.

The main problem with Word 95 was that it crashed. A lot.

I think it had more bugs than any other version of Word.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

There is a word missing

> "we want to make sure that's available to all, not just the one that's claiming it,"

It seems a word is missing, as it should obviously be:

> "we want to make sure that's available to all Americans, not just the one that's claiming it,"

Couple admit they laundered $4B in stolen Bitcoins after Bitfinex super-heist

Re: " Ilya Lichtenstein"

And there's a Morgan involved.

I suspect Ilya's real name is Alexei Volkoff.

Netherlands digital minister smacks down Big Tech over AI regs

"they trust it is safe."

This is the key point. It does not say it has to be safe, just that the public has to be convinced that it is.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

> You were lucky it wasn't an even older Mouse Systems bus mouse. I'm not sure any kind of adaptor ever existed for those other than the 8-bit ISA card it plugged into :-)

> (Or even older mice with OEM connections/protocols for anything from BBC Mcro, Amiga, ST or any of the many other unique "personal computers" that used mice in one form or another)

Those weren't necessarily older, but contemporary.

The Mouse Systems bus never really caught on, and RS232 mice became the standard, later to be replaced by PS/2 and then USB.

The home computers of the 1980s did often not have a standard serial port, so the mice had to be different, usually connected to a joystick port or similar.

I've still got all kinds of mice somewhere in a box, next to the Centronics printer cables and the 5.25" floppy drives. :-)

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

Re: Its always the simple things

I had something similar in my 1930's appartment. One group powered the kitchen, the bathroom (with washing machine and optionally a dryer which I did not have), and some other odds and ends.

I could use the washer, the dishwasher OR the coffee-maker, but never more than 1 of them at the same time.

When I got a new kitchen installed a few years later, I had a group added.

Only afterwards did I find out that one of the other groups powered the doorbell. Only the doorbell.

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

Re: Buying time

In the 80s on some home-computers (possibly some models MSX?), switching it off and on again very quickly stopped execution of the otherwise unstoppable program, but left the memory intact.

It was an established trick to "debug" a game (otherwise known as "crack"), until the rise of hardware-based solutions that could trigger an interrupt, stopping execution without having to switch the computer off and on again.

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

Re: Don't get me started...

Of course.

A map is a Mobile APp, hence the word Map!

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

Re: Steves Failure

> There are good reasons, as well, for training people in the military to not question orders.

Yes and no.

Some orders *must* be questioned and even refused, as stated during the Nuremburg trials on the "Befehl ist Befehl" defense.

FAA wants pilots to be less dependent on computer autopilots

You realize that to obtain an ATPL you first have to get a PPL?

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

> Well said mate, on here we are all equal. Nationality doesn't matter (unless you're from Mars).

What is wrong with Martians?

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: Long and thin eh?

> Surely, what people really want is long and wide?

Yes, they just don't want to pay for it.

Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL

Now you have me wondering what Dutch swearword you were using.

As a native Dutch speaker, I really can't come up with any word that would be shocking. Inappropriate in a professional environment yes, but shocking no.

Dell trials 4-day workweek, massive UK pilot of shortened week begins

I don't get why this is news. Dell is about the last company in the Netherlands allowing 32-hour working weeks. Especially in IT, this is pretty standard and has been for at least the last decade or so.