Posts by Boris the Cockroach 3426 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008
About as likely as the Archbishop of Canterbury being hit by a falling gargolye while swimming off beachy head.
Anyway.... I suspect the solution to these ads will be either new file explorer, or the better solution of a new file explorer running on Linux mint.
And before the naysayers start up... USB stick in usb port and boot up PC... and the only faffing about I had to do was picking a password
home remains a distant pipedream for the likes of me (part time robot wrangler/programmer/fixit guy/weilder of the dread stick of displine*)
Because its rather hard to fix a production problem on production equipment from 17 miles away... although this remote working thing does give me an idea that was had in the 60's about remote working.... that I can control a robot with all the fixing stuff it needs in order to get things going again(the darkness descends) and replace the obvious tools like a racket with a cattle prod, and the clamp arms with chainsaws and flamethrowers and go on a homicidal rampage against the operators who make my life a living hel... <cough> and fix things when they go wrong remotely.
*A big hammer ;)
You're forgetting the golden rule of purchasing
"No one gets fired for buying m$"
plus they have office in the background (whatever version.... and whether it can read a previous version's files*)
So businesses will carry on buying windows regardless of consumer demand, and the majority of consumers will buy windows because thats all they know and all they are offered
*just had to round trip some old office files via libre office and back to office again... FFS
Yeah, Z80s had a DMA mode where a system chip (usually the GFX chip) could set the CPU to DMA mode so that it could access main memory without the CPU cycles getting in the way
I think zilog had a FDD/HDD controller that used that mode too with a similer method to that in the figure of sending the controller the addresses to use along with block size, and the controller would use a DMA mode when the data had arrived from the disk and write it to memory.
this story reflects my programming life
"Just need a quick and dirty prototype pushed out the door to keep XXXXX customer happy"
One quick and dirty program later
"Customer wants 10 more"
Rerun quick and dirty program 10 more times
18 years later and a change of machines, but the same old program
"1000 more this month".....
Wheres the "I want to retire" icon?
much guessed 'no fuel in generator' or 'UPS battery being a smoking piece of wreckage' before reaching the end ...
Along with various C-level twonks yelling "Its been tested every week.. blame IT "
<<looks at the ever growing pile of dead laptops... and praises his backup policy........<panicky feeling start kicking in> <twitch><twitch>
I have is that pluton can be updated (via windows update)
So its only a matter of time before the malware creators find a way of updating pluton themselves... and then baking that into an email attatchment.
If pluton was a 'burn it once' type device that cannot be altered from external software , then it maybe a good idea.
Until that point..... it sounds more like a m$ power grab than any 'security' for my PC
Oh and preventing linux from being installed unless the distro has a m$ supplied key(for a suitable price)
Speaking as an engineer, I've worked somewhere where we had a non engineering trained manager in an engineering manglement position. He actually said "I dont need to know what you do here, I'm here to manage"
Also the same place laid off 33% of the workforce 4 months later, along with aforementioned mangler.
And some of the tales I know about working for the government you would not believe ....
had companies trying on the 'deere' method on us... with 'you need special diagnostic tools' and 'factory trained techs' to service the robots
My boss answers this with 'Let me get our engineer to the phone...'
And its
"Ah special diagnostic tool eh? the motor is burned out because the thrust bearings have failed in the swivel plate.. it needs a new set of bearings , the motor rebuilt and the preload setting on the thrust bearing"
"But how do you know that? and that motor needs special tool to extract it from the housing"
"Well the motor is on my desk right now because I'm an engineer who makes tools and the motor needs a rebuild because I'm an engineer with multi-meter"
"But the warrenty is void if non factory techs .."
"Its 9 yrs old and the warrenty ran out 6 yrs ago.. just give me the details...."(at this point my supply of patience has worn thin and the swearing is approaching)
"...special bearings" comes through the phone
"BS! they're standard swedish thrust bearings and they're in the catalogue under 'thrust bearings' "
Service guy admits defeat and says "I'll email the preload setting"
Much smiles result... until the boss finds out the cost of the repair...."HOW &%^*$&%*&ING MUCH?"
Quote
"Honestly, what can't we just put Zensursula (as she's been known in Germany for years), Borrell (the Spanish geezer), Putin (with or without a shirt) and that Biden guy in a cage and they sort it out amongst themselves and leave the rest of us in peace?"
From 'All quiet on the western front'
Quote
"What's clear is we have a Vichy NATO. A tiny bit of air support is all Ukraine needs and the Russian attack collapses, and with it Putin's regime and we get decades of safety and peace. The tiniest little help, for the greatest reward, and still NATO do not act!"
Ukraine is not a member of NATO... therefore NATO wont act unless the UN authorises it.
However if NATO does act... the first thing the russians will do is take out the airbases in Poland.
If it means using tactical nukes to do it, they will.
At which point we get very pissed off and do the same. and then it escalates.. until we end up with the final problem of an all out thermo-nuclear war
Trying to decide which smoking hole in the ground is the winner
However hard it is..... we have to stand back, if it was the case that no one had nukes , we'd be in there damned quick. if the Ukraine still had its nukes , Russia's army would be on their side of the border right now.
But if Russia was so stupid as to send forces into a NATO country......... sheesh see icon
PS and until last week I never believed putin was THAT stupid....
That was the good thing about word perfect for the Atari ST.... or word writer or whatever it was called.
Figuring out exactly what codes you needed to stick in the printer driver config in order for it to use your bog standard FX-80 dot matrix.
Of course the driver came with a .cfg file for that printer but it never worked for some stupid reason.
what were you saying about lust?
Camera out and take a nice photo of my Memotech MTX500 for them
Keyboard* on top(input device), computer inside casing, nice rounded corners, and a host of connectors out the back (and side) (and inside for RS232/HDD card)
*Note : Best damn keyboard I've ever used, nice clicky keys, nice action, all on a decent 1mm ally plate thats part of the casing.. no bounce, no dead feel(like this keyboard) and you can touch type/hammer away to your hearts content knowing the keys wont stick/bounce/fail like this crummy thing thats on top of a rubber membrane
= quakenet/world = Team fortress = team fortress classic.
All on demon servers
Spent more time there than staring at musty old texts about my degree ;)
PS
The demon TFC servers survived the great switch over to Steam for play and you could still ping them for a long long time even though valve had switched off the authorisation servers
he has to work with the same people I do
Part of my job is looking after the data on the laptops(as well as making sure they still work after being dipped in the plating tank... thats another story best handled with rubber gloves)
So I helpfully created a backup folder, inside the backup folder is about 20 directories named after our customers, so that the robot control programs can be saved in the customers directory under its part number.
All well and good
Except they're all saved to the desktop in one huge great mess by drag and drop from the comm program and the only chance you have of finding anything is to search by part number... if the setter has named the program after the part number in the first place. and if the part number has'nt collided with a previous saved part number from another customer and the setter has clicked "over write"
And then its my fault the program has not been saved.
Retirement........ 6 more years... just 6 more <sobs> years
Heres a novel idea
Interview a few likely looking people who have the right attitude, and smarts too....... then t-r-a-i-n them in the skills you need.
I know its a strange and unusual word, but hey.. it might work.
Also offering a competitive salary once they are trained usually stops all that expensive knowledge leaving the company....
Just a thought
and labels.
Every cable tagged with a code number , C93 for the arm overtravel sensor for example.
So when the arm overtravel alarm goes off, it must be a doddle to swap the sensor out.... except the sensor is fine and cable is blown somewhere.
Open the control box...... C93........... C93 .............. C93............ ahhh there it is.... coupled to the 24 volt DC supply ......... eh?
OK resort to the wiring diagram......... C93 .......... C93 ............. C93............. theres a C92.. but that says its on the HP sensor..... but its wired to Wrist motor encoder line on the arm.....<looks on the arm> that says D12 and the manglement are waiting .. oh so waiting..... with the looks.... the glances..... the wrist tappings.....
resorted to tying a string to the cable , pulling it out, and seeing where it was realy plugged in... A47....
Beer because I needed one
and big plan was to create a list of the government legacy IT estate
A list
thats it
A list
And the next person in the job will have his/her work cutout to define what a 'legacy' system is
Shortly before they jump ship
Maybe by the 10th next person to occupy the job the government may have the begining of a plan to replace said legacy kit.. at which point microsoft discontinue and EOL windows 12 and the government goes back to making a list.
I'm pretty sure that yes, minister and yes , prime minister were documentories
been taking the proper lessons and the health and safety regulations in howto use screwdrivers.
Although the latter one has been my down fall after being disturbed by a moron while trying to de-bug a recursive function ..... I kind of went for a cursive fuction after that... closely followed by grabbing 4 screwdrivers , 2 planks of wood and putting up the easter decorations a bit earlier than planned...
Mainly because everyone techie now knows what a VPN is and how to use it
But its not really about "protecting the children" or "Banning bad actors on internet"
Its about generating headlines in the daily (m)wail and the stun such as "Boris is saving the children.. evil labour wants pedofiles to eat your kids"(the daily excess loves Boris so much so it does'nt need to be fed such stories.. hell they'd support Boris if he announced a policy of mincing everyone who earns less than £60 000/yr)
But it will fail...... mainly because of how long it took them to ban pirate bay and how many times they changed IP ...
But what of the kids... well how about educating them on sexual matters such as pr0n movies are usually staffed by actors and actresses and bare about as much resemblance to real sex as an average 50's war movie does to actual war.
not brexit... but the idiots who decided to re-negociate it after dumping their former leader... and then protraying themselves as 'we did brexit' after they were the ones stuffing it up for as long as it took to get bozo the clown into downing street*
To be honest 1/2 the tories run around believing they're in god's own country of the 1950's and the other 1/2 think its still 1940 and time to jump in the spitfire and give the hun a jolly good spanking before crumpets and tea before cursing the french for surrendering.
meanwhile the adults on both sides shake their heads and wish that our glorious leaders on both sides would actually do something positive for a change instead of standing at the edge of their respective playpens and throwing soiled nappies at each other.
another story from the archive... and bring back the PTSD from repeated banging of my head against a wall
We had a job and it demanded 100% check on a critical size. operators being operators.. well they threw the part in the finished bin without checking it....
So I had a bright idea.... lets use the machine's probing tools to measure said size and display it on screen with a dialog.
Result : operators threw the finished parts in the bin without looking at the dialog.
OK... round 2 : Re-program dialog so that a red border is displayed if the part is wrong, and a green border is displayed for a correct part
Result : operators threw the finished parts in the bin without looking at the dialog.
Right you lot(I'm getting annoyed now) : Re-program dialog so that the red one uses flashing red to display the error and steady green for a good part
Result : operators threw the finished parts in the bin without looking at the dialog..............
BASTARDS! : Re-program said code behind dialog to offer 2 paths through the code, steady green exits the program and allows for a restart, flashing red results in an endless loop that locks the machine until the reset is pressed
Result 1 : Success.. scrap parts in scrap bin, good parts in finished bin, machine setters called over to stop scrap.
Result 2 : Manglement now complain that the number of parts made is way lower than before and want all changes removed
Me : AIIIIEIiiiieieieieieieieieiei <THUD><THUD><THUD><THUD><THUD><THUD>
At 15km/sec getting to your office would indeed take 3 seconds
Sadly (and taking that you're around sea level) that speed in the atmosphere at that height would cause quite a large explosion..... maybe a few melted bits of the engine would land on your desk.... but I would'nt think so.
Still might provide a few headlines "Man attempts hypersonic commute to work... physics says no"
I tried that with the NHS doctors app "Calculate the % chance of death when the patient has major heart surgery"
Put in normal inputs..... mine came back at about 0.75-1.25%
Next try how far up I can get the % to go ( 94.5%) as I remember.
Now lets try putting in some really silly values eg blood pressure 250/10 with a BPM of 0.05
Yupp crashed.(the bpm did it..... did'nt like values lower than 1)
But then how many hacks are done with the root account being "admin" and the passy "1234".....
Not so fast.
The front end costs for any industrial stuff is generally the same across the world.
You want a 5 axis alll singing all dancing CNC machine complete with intergrated robot handler.... best you pony up some $$$ to germany.. transport costs are naff all in comparision... and just need a warehouse with a decent concrete floor to install it on.
Then comes the variable prices such as power, waste disposal and finally paying for the staff
So if you're bashing low margin stuff, you dont want to pay any more than you have to for the staff, high margin stuff needs the staff so thats going to cost you plenty of $$$.
Of course you could use the no brain method of hiring expensive staff to build up your multi-million factory, then firing the lot and hiring min wagers as 'everything is setup with instructions for doing the job'
Which works very well until the min wagers who dont give a toss dont follow the instructions exactly........and your multi-million factory stops because 1 of the machines has just been turned into scrap metal.....
be happy to see 6-8 tiny screws in the back of my smartphone and a handy 'lever here' tab so I can unseal the battery compartment and install a new battery. then a line of glue and 8 screws to lock it back up again.
Instead the method is hot air gun the phone, slide a thin plastic thing into the gap between the screen and the body, lever the screen out, hot air gun to the connector and remove screen completely, 12 tiny(and I mean tiny) screws to dismount the phone innards from the body, flip over, hot air gun the battery and disconnect.
Assembly is easy... follow the above instructions in reverse... and pray it still works when you switch on...
Guess another servicable phone is off to landfill :( good side though is that its 5 years old now
this a couple of years ago, but its not for me.
Partly because you'll have your hands tied by the sentencing guidelines laid down by the home office(and the clerk of the court really does all the hard work), but because , as a police friend said to me, "You'll get sick of seeing the same repeat customers again and again and you'll not be able to do a damn thing about it"
While a lot of your points make perfect sense and are , indeed, a good idea
Your suggestion of building a 'B' ark is quite frankly , stupid.
Building the ark should be done so that the people who go on this ark are the people like many of the posters here, technical, literate, and well educated.
Then we can build utopia in orbit and watch as the rest of humanity sinks into the mud while they effectively argue over who controls the TV remote.
And as we sail off to explore the unknown... we notice the flaw with the plan.... that theres no sure thing that our children will be as smart as us.....
to show that perhaps leaving everything "to the market" is not the best way to run an economy after all.
Especially in the case of nationally vital energy supplies that everyone needs.
Because the market will always and ALWAYS find the cheapest option in order to maximise profits, hell some companies would cheerfully pump 10 000 tons hydro-flouric acid into a river if it saved them $0.001 per ton disposal cost.
But we're paying for the mistakes made 20 odd years ago when we knew our nuclear/coal stations would be going end of life and built nothing but gas and a few windmills to replace them..
Oh and for all the wind turbine fans out there going "we can replace fossil fuels with wind and not have any need of nuclear either" check out the wind speeds across southern england over the past week (and what the forecast is) and try to explain how we power 40 million people when the wind ISN'T FUCKING BLOWING!
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