* Posts by Anonymous Custard

2789 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008

Satellites with lasers and machine guns coming! China's new plans? Trump's Space Force? Nope, the French

Anonymous Custard
Thumb Up

Word of the day

At least I can say I've learned a new word today - Taiga.

El Reg never ceases to educate. Now if only they'd tell us how they're going to fit the sharks into the satellites?

Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: Health and safety gone senile

One of our customers had that - even had nice "safety first" logo/motto lanyards which they were very proud of. At least until I pointed out to them that they lacked the little plastic safety clip that would break before their neck did if the thing did get caught in something.

Suffice it to say a swift withdrawal and rework ensued. And what did I get for this? Yes, they insisted I had one too...

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

DIY

Personally I would have just handed her the scissors (after pulling the plug on the printer) and let her make her own decision on freeing herself, and how much hair she wanted to lose in the process. No-one else to blame in that case (not that this would stop some people).

Summer vacations put an end to rampant desktop crimewave

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Disposable income

The secret is to in turn nick the pens from hotel rooms when you stay there, so that there is a large buffer stock to keep the cycle ongoing.

And as for loo roll, most of the stuff isn't worth the effort as its so cheap, waffy and thin that you have to use 3-4x the amount you normally would folded together before you get something that you won't put your fingers through. Indeed it's become one of my judgement criteria for any workplace, hotel or other location you might need to spend an extended period of time in.

So the question is whether it's getting nicked, or people are just using it up significantly more quickly than at home because it's so thin and useless?

Forget all the fancy promises and pledges you may get, go look in the bog cubicle and see how much they really care for their staff/clientelle by the quality of the paper they provide. It's a surprisingly good yardstick for whether the place is worth having anything to do with...

It's so hot, UK needs to start naming heatwaves like we do when it's a bit windy – climate boffins

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Yes but sleeping in the freezer will probably generate its own issues after a short while...

'Cockwomble' is off the menu: Uncle Bulgaria issues edict against using name in vain

Anonymous Custard
Thumb Up

Re: Katie Who?

Pray you never find out...

In this case ignorance is most definitely bliss.

Anonymous Custard

Pot meet kettle

"To call yourself 'plus-size' is just a euphemism for being fat. Life is much easier when you're thinner. Big is not beautiful, of course a job comes down to how you look."

So would that be similar to calling yourself a "public safety hazard" as a euphemism for being a brainless racist egotistical talentless publicity whore?

And boy does she need a womble or few going around after her to clear up all the shit she spouts...

When you play the game of Big Spendy Thrones, nobody wins – your crap chair just goes missing

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

That's life...

You're all very naughty boys...

Apollo at 50? How about 40 years since Skylab smacked into Australia

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Litter bugs

Apparently it was paid on their behalf by a Californian radio DJ, who earned a key to the city of Esperance for his troubles...

http://mentalfloss.com/article/70708/nasas-unpaid-400-littering-ticket-skylab-debris-australia

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Free Willy

So just think, but for NASA having problems with the shuttle, Matt Smith (no not Dr Who, the other one) would have had to come up with a whole new level for Manic Miner...

Christ I feel old now, MM itself is 36 years old! Skylab Landing Bay and all...

Who cares about a Soyuz launch or a Vega delay when there's space gin to be had?

Anonymous Custard
Pint

Gin and rockets

The kind of combination that would make Lester proud...

Chrome's default-on ad blocker – which doesn't block adverts on 99% of websites – goes global

Anonymous Custard
Megaphone

Re: "based on user feedback"

Can I add to that anything which plays annoying and pointless audio by default, and doubly so if there is no mute button (or even better to muted by default).

I don't know but it's been said, Amphenol plugs are made with lead

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: keeping swappable spares in stock might make sense

and the spares for your stuff now have to come from the "long term support center"

Or as the rest of us know it, eBay...

Reach out for the healing hands... of guru Dabbs

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Advanced percussive maintenance

It's the zen optimisation of percussive maintenance (ie knowing quite where to hit something to make it work).

Taken to the fine art extreme it's radiating enough zen of upcoming physical violence that you put the fear of Dabbs into them and they start working to avoid it? Of course same may also be applicable to the user as well, as a pleasant by-product?

Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Error Messages

Or "This cannot happen - please reboot reality..."

Will that old Vulcan's engines run? Bluebird jet boat team turn to Cold War bomber

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Brings back memories of a rather special day at Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire a few years back.

It's a short distance from RAF Coningsby where the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight are based, and whilst I was up on the roof of the castle the flight took off and were doing some practice basically around the castle.

Quite stirring to see the planes from such an unusual viewpoint a hundred and something feet up in the air. And as for the noise up that close, absolutely magical...

You should really get an Android or iPhone, says Microsoft: No more app updates for Windows Phone 8.x holdouts

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Ballmer laughed

Alas I can't find the video of Ballmer now.

This one?

Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices?

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Skip it

to his surprise and disappointment, there is no skip labelled "EARPHONES"

Did you look at the label on the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet?

The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre

Anonymous Custard
Alert

Re: What do you think ?

Nah, it should be Charley for such dire warning cases...

Having bank problems? I feel bad for you son: I've got 25 million problems, but a bulk upload ain't one

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: 10 minutes, not a second more...

Also reminds me of the induction/site orientation training for one of our customers (global multinational semiconductor manufacturer) who is very big on safety that I had a few years back. Up comes the various slides, unless the training lady gets to the one about LOTO (lock-out / tag-out).

I looks at this, and looks around the room to see if anyone else has spotted the issue. Apparently not, so I ask the trainer "what's actually wrong with that image?". She looks and ponders for a moment, then says she can't see anything. At this point I point out that her slide seems to show someone has actually managed to lock-out a breaker in the ON position rather than the OFF one (which I didn't think possible, but they seemed to have managed it). Cue her going white, before commenting that she's been using these slides for years and no-one has spotted that until now.

Had a colleague have to do the training recently and asked him to check that slide out for me. Seems that the image is still in it, but it's now a question posed of "what's wrong with this image" asked to the trainees...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Jealous now.

As the old saying goes - "Be careful what you wish for..."

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: 10 minutes, not a second more...

Indeed - LOTO (lock-out, tag-out) is your friend...

Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Gone is the full-sized HDMI type A connector,

The problem is that two mini-HDMI to full-HDMI dongles won't fit side by side, at least the standard ones that get shipped in the Pi Zero kits (the "solid block" type dongle).

The new cables aren't exactly expensive though, and there's always the cable-type dongles as well which probably would fit side-by-side into the new Pi4.

And there's a new FLIRC case especially for the Pi4, which is excellent to deal with the heat issue (as was the previous version one for the 3B/B+).

The European Space Agency is going to visit a new comet in 2028. Which one? We haven't discovered it yet

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Can you actually tell if a comet is pristine or not?

Well it certainly won't be pristine any more once they've smacked various craft into it...

PowerPoint to start telling you that your presentation is bad and you should feel bad

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: - Thou shalt not use the words "going forward"

But if you don't reach out, will they be there?

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Best presentation I ever saw at a conference was a reasonably long one relating to some scientific investigation/endeavour, and had a comic strip running long the bottom of it.

So slide to slide it was telling a story, and at the end the presenter simply asked "and I guess you all want to know how things finally concluded" and put up a totally blank slide except for the cartoon conclusion at the bottom, whilst verbally summarising the end results of the experimental investigation.

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: 'about equal to the size of Texas'

So how many was Bob Marley?

Monster magnet in my pocket: Boffins' gizmo packs 45.5-tesla punch and weighs just 390g

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: When will I be able to put it on my fridge door ?

Surely you don't need the fridge anymore? How long does chicken take to defrost from 85K?

Somewhat longer than it would take to freeze methinks.

I can vouch for LN2 being an excellent way to instantly freeze ice-pops on warm summer days in the lab, from all too long ago back in my PhD student times. Never tried it with LHe, that was reserved for our magnet (a puny 6T one).

Oh and kudos to Katyanna for correctly knowing Kelvin is an absolute unit and not calling them degrees Kelvin.

Give my regards to Reigate: Print biz Canon to up sticks in the sticks

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Interesting

I always thought that was Croydon.

At least that's where all my Japanese ex-pat colleagues used to live (my employer is a Japanese company).

Still the Cannon place is a nice spot, on the lower end of Reigate Hill, so I'm sure they can sell it off for a tidy packet to some developer for yet more tiny identikit boxes they laughingly call apartments and homes around here.

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Interesting

Not really, if you actually know the origin of the term (abbreviated Cockney rhyming slang, from "Berkeley Hunt")...

It's 50 years to the day since Apollo 10 blasted off: America's lunar landing 'dress rehearsal'

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: From the dictionary definition

Indeed, the engineer's dream is that nominal is normal...

Anonymous Custard
Alien

Re: '13 Minutes to the Moon'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads

The above is the series download page, via which you can get all the episodes released so far (including the countdown ones).

Polygraph knows all: You've been using our user feedback form

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Hot desking

...companies that employ Agile working tend to have a very high turnover of staff.

Are you sure it's just that they haven't got a clue where to find them any more?

If you're ever lost on the Moon, Ordnance Survey now has you covered for Apollo 11 anniversary

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Given that ...

Ah, the old hand held portable gate...

Anonymous Custard
Alien

Personally I would include duct tape and dental floss to round out that tool manufacturing kit to be a universal one.

Personally I just hope the easter eggs aren't the locations of the 96 bags of astronaut poo that also got left behind...

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: So what that means...

And don't do your homework without wearing headphones...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Seen this before

Nah, in a vacuum everyone knows you can only use spherical cows.

Japan on track to start testing Alfa-X, fastest train in the world with top speed of 400kph

Anonymous Custard

Re: It's not only their speed, it's their reliability

Yup. I work for the European arm of a Japanese company, so am over there occasionally and one of the real joys is travelling on the Shinkansen.

It's also something of an experience when you're stood on the platform and one that isn't stopping passes through at speed. The noise and pressure wave are "interesting", although they do display warnings in both Japanese and English on the notice display boards that a non-stopper is coming through because of it. Suffice it to say they're neither quiet nor subtle...

You can literally set your watch by them, the tickets give you both carriage and seat number for reservations, and at the stations they even have little marks on the platform to show you where to stand and the train pulls up exactly to them every time. It's wonderful - even a dumb Gaijin like me can do it.

But it's other little things like the way the conductor (who they always have) will bow to the carriage both when he/she enters and leaves it. Plus the way that the things are cleaned at the end of every journey (not every day), and are generally spotless anyway.

The only downside is when I have to come back to the UK and use trains here afterwards...

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: So...

Just what I was about to point out. Beancounters and HR have control over salaries/expenses and contracts/actual employment respectively, so giving them leverage over anyone and everyone.

You may hate them, but in the end you personally need them, or at least their (supposed) function...

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Marketing creates dreams and ideals.

Sales creates expectations and promises.

Engineering has to introduce realities and practicalities.

Never has "miracles we do while you wait, the impossible takes a little longer" been more applicable.

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Makers of promises vs keepers of promises...

I'm actually quite surprised that the marketing bods cared at all.

From personal experience it's normally sales/marketting that make all the promises, and then the field engineers get the "joy" of keeping those promises and getting the damn thing to work and to meet whatever lofty ideal the customer wants and the sales drone has blindly agreed to. By that point everyone else has moved on to the next pitch, and it's the engineers problem to deliver the impossible.

This is of course coupled with the promises for 24/7 support and for man-on-site start-up commitment, usually without actually asking or even informing us up-front. We only know about it once the deal is sealed and it drops into our laps. And as we're engineers we seem to be assumed to have inifinite manpower available, and teleportation devices to hand so we can support multiple sites in multiple countries all at once.

It's also coupled with a "lean and efficient" manpower structure which would be better described as a skeleton staff. And we hire 3rd party engineers as it's a "cyclical industry", despite the fact we've had record breaking years for the last few, and we don't have enough people to cover what we have to do, let alone all the new stuff we're supposed to be getting into. So we're basically merrily training recruitment companies staff...

Double-sided printing data ballsup leaves insurance giant Chubb with egg on its face

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: They ought to teach this in schools.

But then have no space for your (hand) luggage, at least if you're in cattle class. And then delay everything while the cabin crew play tetris to try and rejig it all to fit.

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: 'An Evil A.I.'

You mean there's another kind possible in literature (or anywhere else for that matter)?

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Dabbs has been told right

Why do we need artificial stupidity when there's such an excess of real stupidity around?

Anonymous Custard
Pint

So how about we leave the robo-journalists to write stuff for the robo-commentards and content aggregators to vents their robo-spleens over, whilst the rest of us meatsacks just retire down the pub for a swift pint or six?

Who says there's no positives in progress?

Age verification biz claims no-payment model for 40% of Brits ahead of July pr0n ban

Anonymous Custard
Big Brother

Re: criminals, wrong'uns and law enforcement agencies

I'd wonder in some cases that you can tell them apart...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: There's pr0n you have to pay for?

When your missus sees your browser history?

If the thing you were doing earlier is 'drop table' commands, ctrl-c, ctrl-v is not your friend

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Social Network?

Somehow I think we're more an Anti-Social Bastard Organisation...

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Going though my mind...

We regret to inform you the massive asteroid NASA's all excited about probably won't hit Earth

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: 1/4 mph

Penalty shootout?

If so then we here in England are royally screwed...