* Posts by Admiral Grace Hopper

1013 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2008

Remember those holy tech wars we used to have? Heh, good times

Admiral Grace Hopper
Windows

Bigendian vs. Littleendian

I can remember having to write code to switch tapes from one endian scheme to the other (and vice versa, obv). Since we sorted out those fundamental issues things have been much quieter. I still think in EBCDIC rather than Unicode though.

UK taxman told to go easy on transformation with Brexit in headlights

Admiral Grace Hopper

Whither Aspire?

Is Aspire still a thing? After the various contract novations, in-housings and assorted jiggery-pokery I'd have thought that there wasn't enough left of the Aspire contract left to line a budgie cage.

Astroboffins say our Solar System is a dark, violent, cosmic weirdo

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: a dark, violent, cosmic weirdo

I used to work in Telford.

The healing hands of customer support get an acronym: Do YOU have 'tallah-toe-big'?

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Opposite effect

I used to work with someone similarly gifted. I tried to get him to test anything and everything - hardware, software, coffee machines, help files, chairs - if he he couldn't break it, it was bomb-proof. We called him "Entropy's Little Buddy". Every organisation should have one.

Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious

Admiral Grace Hopper

"[...] the cleaner was in, and unplugged the modem to plug the vacuum cleaner in. "

In our DC in the 80s it was the HSXC controller that got unplugged every night.

The tale of the cleaner looking for a plug always sounds like an urban myth until it happens to you.

A certain millennial turned 30 recently: Welcome to middle age, Microsoft Excel v2

Admiral Grace Hopper

Bought Excel?

In those free-wheeling days when copy protection was at best a gossamer condom the first thing that anyone did when a PC landed on your office desk was to take "Archive Copies" of all the supplied software to be kept off site. I only threw away my off-site archive of Excel 5 when I moved house last year.

SurfaceBook 2 battery drains even when plugged in

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: 'cause more damage to your brand'

"I won't be that gimp anymore."

I reached that point with Vista. I'll happily use Windows if I am being to do so, but not in my own time. I helped my pro bono support clients migrate to Mac or Linux and life has been so much better since.

All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!'

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: the big red button

There's something irresistible about a Big Red Button.

One afternoon, while happily programming away, the office was filled with the sound of silence as all the fans on all the desktops and servers wound done and the LaserJet II printers fell silent. A graduate trainee stood next to a Big Red Button looking aghast. Someone at a desk near him told us later that he'd seen the grad staring transfixed at the Big Red Button for a good minute or so before reaching out and pressing it. His Father Dougal moment cost the best part of half a days work as it took that long to power up the whole building without tripping the breakers every time the master switch was thrown.

Two days later, all the Big Red Buttons had Big Yellow Covers on them.

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Fragile. Very fragile.

Yes, I'm with you all the way, right up to the point where I compile my personal list of people for whom I have worked who still retain a little of the technical nous that got them to where they are now, but have had all the common sense removed by a few years of management. Much as I want to live in a world where this could not happen, I have done too often and for too long.

The Reg parts ways with imagineer and thought pathfinder Steve Bong

Admiral Grace Hopper

L’Esprit d’Escalier

I forgot to ask, where did it all go Bong?

Admiral Grace Hopper

Technology Trebuchet

Bong finally flung. Sad, but disruption catches up with everyone in the end, even the old disruptors.

MPs slam HMRC's 'deeply worrying' lack of post-Brexit customs system

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: "A failed customs system could lead to huge disruption for businesses,"

In fact I'm not sure if the current rules implemented within CHIEFS (in ICL 4GL dating from the 70's) are fully documented.

But surely one of the selling points of ApplicationMaster was that it was self-documenting if used correctly?

Mm, sacrilicious: Greggs advent calendar features sausage roll in a manger

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: "All from one magical animal"

I had to check the link

It's as racy as I get these days.

Admiral Grace Hopper
Pint

"All from one magical animal"

A very dear friend bought this Pork Scratching Advent Calendar for me. I am a very lucky girl indeed.

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Forth

"It's COBOL I despise."

Harumph.

Admiral Grace Hopper

All welcome here.

I'm comfortable with many languages and enjoy meeting the challenge of their specialisations and idiosyncrasies. It can be a joy getting an insight into the thought processes of our antecedents. I learned a huge respect for the designers of S3 when I had cause to revisit it recently. Each has its own quirks that can delight or infuriate, but each language was created for a purpose and the fun lies in using it for that purpose.

That being said, if the answer is VBA, you're asking the wrong question.

Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: The Juice Is Loose

We were developers, what were they going to do?

Taking food and drink near any of the msnframe nodes in the computer hall, however, was utterly forbidden (unless you were an op and it was anywhere near Christmas - we’ve had BOFHs in our life ever since Knute was a lad).

Admiral Grace Hopper
Coffee/keyboard

The Juice Is Loose

Back in pre-history, Philips made a useful workstation system called Maestro, a mini-computer and desktop system that we used to make life easier for the mainframe developerr. We used them very effectively and were pleased when we upgraded to the new Maestro 9000 series, which had a lot of the functionality put into some slick and spendy (£3000 in 1990) keyboard units. You can see one stuck to the wall of the Starbug in Red Dwarf. They were well built, but sadly not environment sealed as we discovered when my desk neighbour over-exerted himself while trying to open a recalcitrant carton of orange juice and when the carton opened in a rapidly evolving failure mode dumped the contents into the keyboard/desktop computer unit. Orange juice and PCBs are not amicable companions. He was known as OJ for a long while after that, until the nickname acquired unfortunate connotations.

Hop on, Average Rabbit: Latest extortionware menace flopped

Admiral Grace Hopper

Kill The Wabbit

Elmer Fudd FTW.

Your data will get hacked anyway so you might as well give up protecting it

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Dungeness

Thank you for the pointers. For whatever reason it's a part of the country that I haven't really been to and has long been on my to-do list, along with Orford Ness.

Capgemini: We love our 'flexible, flowing' spade

Admiral Grace Hopper

Can I have an "E" please Bob?

I was working for EDS when they changed from a square surround for the "E" to a round one, because "e" was then the magic letter and making it round would be the panacea for all the company's woes. It was possibly the worst result of dropping a dodgy E that I ever saw.

BOFH: Oh dear. Did someone get lost on the Audit Trail?

Admiral Grace Hopper

Teamwork

Go team!

I love disruptive computer jargon. It's so very William Burroughs

Admiral Grace Hopper

Normally I abhor backronyms

But this one is beautiful.

Commodore 64 makes a half-sized comeback

Admiral Grace Hopper

Look in the loft

Or trawl the eBazaars, the original machines are still working and widely available. Thanks the tin solder they still work as well as they ever did.

Behold iOS 11, an entirely new computer platform from Apple

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: "you'd have almost no apps"

Okay... why single out the "millennials" when we've experienced stuttery computers for decades?

Quite right too. I've been writing slow software for decades. Sometimes it was even designed to be that way. "Can you slow down your output? It's backing up at the collector ..."

New HMRC IT boss to 'recuse' herself over Microsoft decisions

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: This is getting stupid

the legendary sense of humour that HMRC has*

When I was working for the Inland Revenue, the precursor to HMRC, we tried to book Ken Dodd to play our staff social club. His agent didn't think that this was a good idea, for some reason.

Nest cracks out cheaper spin of its thermostat

Admiral Grace Hopper

Leaping Two Generations

When I moved into my house last year I was surprised to find that the heating system had no thermostat control whatsoever. Fitting a similar device to this was a lot easier than chasing the walls to wire in a simpler thermostat. While I am instinctively averse to cloudy things in the home, I am actively repelled by unnecessary grief.

Mazda and Toyota join forces on Linux-based connected car platform

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Timing

It certainly isn't, but as I came here to make the same gag I may be biased.

Bombastic boss gave insane instructions to sensible sysadmin, with client on speakerphone

Admiral Grace Hopper

"Mundane staff"

I've worked with those. Heck, I've been one of those.

Assange offers job to sacked Google diversity manifestbro

Admiral Grace Hopper

Is there room for anyone else

In the cupboard he's hiding in?

The ultimate full English breakfast – have your SAY

Admiral Grace Hopper

We are certainly drifting into the arena of the unwell.

BOFH: Oh go on. Strap me to your Hell Desk, PFY

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: This

Au contraire, I suspect that it will end very well for someone but precisely who remains to be seen. I'm not betting against our hero though.

Ten new tech terms I learnt this summer: Do you know them all?

Admiral Grace Hopper

Don't dis the innovative

Our future lies in innovative jams and marmalades. It's the way forward.

User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches

Admiral Grace Hopper

We'll always have Lincoln

We were having odd problems with a piece of client/server code that wrote state information from the desktop to an Access DB on the local office servers. Try as we might, we couldn't replicate it on the set up we had in our development office and nothing showed up on any of the logs that pulled from the servers or the desktops. I asked if we might be permitted an office visit, which was refused for months until the manager of the Lincoln office got sick and tired enough to authorise the budget for a two-dayer.

Having got to their office, suited and booted with our customer-facing faces on, we had little to do other than wait for things to go bang. As it was the first time that we as developers had been allowed near the end users we took the opportunity to ask them how they found the software. We learned that they didn't like it, but largely because it had been foisted on them and their training hadn't covered the bits that we'd put in to make their lives easier. We spend two working days giving impromptu training in our software and Windows 3.11 in general and having found the diagnostic data we needed, left an office much happier with life in general and our software in particular. The office manager sent a letter to our boss expressing her joy, we got a nice little bonus, lots of steers on where the next version needed to go to make the users even more happier, we'd had a jolly nice time in Lincoln with its wonderful pubs and all was well with with the world.

Two days later we got a phone call. A field tech had arrived and rebuilt their server and nothing worked any more. The customer had two offices in Lincoln with two different functions, thus two different server builds. Their server now had the wrong build on it, it was Friday and the field tech had buggered off. It took our support guys three days to sort it out. All that good PR washed away like tears in rain.

Admiral Grace Hopper

"He would put in a (fake) trouble ticket and request me."

Am I the only to think that this sounds like stalking with a nice lunch thrown in?

Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C

Admiral Grace Hopper

COBOL FTW

But I may be biased.

Apple hurls out patches for dozens of security holes in iOS, macOS

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Credit to Apple, At least they do updates.

Precisely the reason I went back to iOS and Apple. I liked Android and had good experiences with Samsung and HTC devices, but the patching was ... patchy.

May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

Admiral Grace Hopper

Space 1999

I'm glad there's some love for Space 1999, but not as much as I'd hoped for. Kids these days ...

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Admiral Grace Hopper

Never get out of the boat.

'My PC needs to lose weight' says user with FAT filesystem

Admiral Grace Hopper
Windows

Re: Windows 98

We didn't have a computer in school, but we did have a teletype and an acoustic coupler that allowed us access to the mainframe at the local polytechnic.

Admiral Grace Hopper

I think we've covered despoiled kit before. I've seen a few controller cards in machines that have come back from customer sites covered in enough crap to qualify as "scuzzy".

Admiral Grace Hopper

SMTP

I remember a respected team leader telling a customer that SMTP stood for "Send Mail To People" and managing to keep a straight face.

The nuclear launch button won't be pressed by a finger but by a bot

Admiral Grace Hopper

Einstein A-Go-Go

You'd better watch out, you'd better beware,

Albert said that E = mc²

Windows 10 love to see PC market grow again. Future iPhone to be clear. Elvis to re-appear

Admiral Grace Hopper

Re: Refresh of hardware

My new dev laptop for work will be Win10 only because Win7 has been withdrawn from the corporate build. Given the choice, I would not be adding to the Win10 growth stats. I've only ever seen Win10 before in the period between a new laptop arriving at home and a Linux being dropped onto it.

Admiral Grace Hopper

When I was a girl,

And my PC was a pup,

Over code and programs we'd stray.

Just a girl and her machine,

We were both full of fun,

We grew up together that way.

As the years fast did roll,

My PC, he grew old,

His eyes were fast growing dim.

And one day the doctor looked at me and said,

"I can do no more for him, Grace".

With hands that were trembling,

I picked up my gun,

And aimed it at the PCs faithful head.

I just couldn't do it, I wanted to run,

I wish they would shoot me instead.

It blinked its cursor and looked up at me,

And laid his keyboard on my knee.

I had struck the best friend a girl ever had,

I cried so I scarcely could see.

Old Shep, he has gone where the good PCs go

And no more with old Shep will I code.

But if PCs have a heaven, there's one thing I know,

Old Shep has a wonderful home.

Hasta la Windows Vista, baby! It's now officially dead – good riddance

Admiral Grace Hopper
Flame

Burn it

Burn it with fire.

It's 30 years ago: IBM's final battle with reality

Admiral Grace Hopper

The Man In The High Data Centre

I enjoy a good counterfactual. I still wonder occasionally how the world would have looked if IBM and Apple had got Pink to the point where it was marketable.

Security co-operation unlikely to change post Brexit, despite threats

Admiral Grace Hopper

I could have been worse. Imagine what the letter would have looked like if the more unhinged members of the government had wound up in charge.

Microsoft wants screaming Windows fans, not just users

Admiral Grace Hopper

Screaming Windows Fans

The fans stopped screaming on the SQL Server 6 box after we moved from Win NT4 to Win 2K.