* Posts by J.G.Harston

3710 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

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Big Daddy?

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

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Re: What percentage?

And it has to be a proper power cycle. Turn power off. Wait several seconds for electrons to come to a halt. Turn power back on again. After replacing way too many PSUs killed by people flicFLIKflic-ing them, I screamed at one of them STOP KILLING THE ****ING COMPUTERS!!!! THERE IS *NO* REASON TO DO THAT OTHER THAN *DELIBERATELY* TRYING TO DESTROY IT. IF YOU DO IT AGAIN I WILL THROW YOU OUT OF THIS BUILDING.

WHY do some people think that the way to cycle an electrical device is to try and remove the power for a LITTLE time as possible?

aaaaaand breathe.....

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Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

Apparently, Bracknell is where the head software manager for Horizon ran away to and locked himself away from pestering programmers.

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Re: Remote people might be right

"It won't make a difference". Ok, I'll do it anyway, while I'm filling the job sheet and packing my tools away.

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Re: Had a similar thing happen

Piece of advice: keep a notebook. In loads of jobs I've built up quick-fix solutions by noting what fixed something last time. Eg:

"Zoom crashes - give up, reboot computer, don't bother trying get Zoom working, just kill the PC."

"Paper error XXYX: remove toner, there *will* be a sheet stuck inside."

"SystmOne *must* have a user's key-card inserted to allow Admin to configure system"

"If new installtion won't recognise keycard, just replace keyboard, don't bother fiddling with configs."

etc.

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Re: Not Putting the Cart Before the Horse

I worked with a chap who couldn't grasp the concept of inertia and centre-of-gravity. Several times he loaded up one of those sorts of trollies, pushed it out of the lift by its highest edge, a wheel would hit the bump in the floor between the lift car and the corridor, and the whole stack of PCs would go flying off the trolley.

It seems to be a common brain defect. Think how many times you see people attempting to move furniture by pushing the *HIGHEST* part of it and being completely bemused that the damn thing falls over rather than moves.

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I think I'd have said: "Ok, to be electrically safe I'll power it down - could be a short circuit". Then "accidently" powered it back up "for testing purposes".

Leaked email: Unit4 ERP system leaves some school staff with 'nil pay'

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Re: An inconvenience ?

"IT" and "well-paid job" in (almost) the same sentence?!?!?!?!? Excuse me while my sides split.

Japanese government finally bids sayonara to the 3.5" floppy disk

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Re: But I have a box of hollerith cards with my tax statements on them --- woe is me!

I remember in the early 2000s having to collect the electoral register on tape and send it off for processing to be returned on a CD-ROM. ;) I oversaw the project where everything was updated to Express (I think). In the process about 20,000 "ghosts" were cleaned from the system as well.

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But as long as they are not *required* to use non-disk-based data transfer, but are *allowed* to use non-disk-based data transfer, I see no problem.

That runaway datacenter power grab is the best news for net zero this century

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Re: This will never happen in the UK

Kelvin Moles? And four thousand of them!

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So, just buy of a small fleet of nuclear submarines and wire them up to the data network.

Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion

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The more I read about Linus the more I wonder: how does he earn a living? I can't work out what on earth he does that provides a means of paying bills.

Wait, security courses aren't a requirement to graduate with a computer science degree?

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Re: Totally concur that security should be part of any computer oriented curriculum

That's because the real world reality is that "Computer Science" is not really part of IT. Computer Science != IT. Computer Science != Software Development. Software Development != IT. Yet, all too many people assume and insist that all are the same thing.

"You said you wanted a school job, I've got you a job cleaning toilets, hey why are you complaining, it's cleaning toilets IN! A! SCHOOL!"

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"it's not the job of CS degrees to produce fully skilled programmers for the software industry"

Correct, that's the job of a PROGRAMMING course.

Top-tier IT talent doesn't stick around in 'mid-market' organizations

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It's not that more than a quarter could only keep staff between one and six months, it's that more than a quarter are only prepared to actually employ people for between one and six months. End of contract, bugger off. Want more work? Wait until we get around to wanting more workers.

Five ripped off IT giant with $7M+ in bogus work expenses, prosecutors claim

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Ok, splurge on groceries and domestic fuel. Can't take that cabbage and gas off me after I've cooked and eaten it.

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Hotel stays, a cruise? That's small time. I'd be splurging on paying the mortgage and paying for groceries.

David Mills, the internet's Father Time, dies at 85

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Re: Hmm!

And there are a lot of people doing "IT Labouring" where the application requires a £40,000 degree, but the job itself doesn't, and doesn't pay enough to pay the debts.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

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Re: Obviously Oblivious

But "heavy things are heavy" *IS* obviously obvious.

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Re: Responsibility

"Rewind to your first experience...."

Well, for any normal human that will have been around the age of nine months when you extended an arm and positional feedback told your brain that gravity was a thing. If you didn't manage to get past that stage, you have a great deal more wrong with your life. YOU. DO. NOT. NEED. TO. BE. TAUGHT. HOW. TO. BREATHE.

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Re: Tick-Box Lists ...

*Especially* where processes are sequentially dependent and/or there are time lags between steps, so you absolutely must have some form of documentation to tell you where you've got up to so you can do the next step.

* Create account, wait for it to propagate

* When propagated, do X, .... etc.

* When X completes, do Y, etc...

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*EVERYBODY* is "on" the spectrum, that's what "spectrum" fooking means.

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Re: Human Nature

You don't need to be *taught* levers and moments, it's part of the physical functioning of the human body! It's like expecting people to be have to be taught how to foooking BREATHE!

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The inabilaity to comprehend gravity is so commonplace I've come to believe it must be some sort of active physical physological disorder.

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

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Re: OneDriving Me Up The Wall

I had a job *administering* the big red button system, and it was appalling how frequently a terminator order came through with zero evidence that it was incorrect, and the ones I caught only happened due to a missing contact address to send a courier to reclaim equipment.

IT consultant fined for daring to expose shoddy security

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Clearly, plain-text editors must be banned.

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

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I remember getting an updated version of metapad, and the file had doubled in size - all down to the resources including a higher resolution icon file.

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

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c'mon, it's *BBC* BASIC:

REPEAT:PRINT "Awesome":UNTIL FALSE

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

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So. Just. CHOOSE. Not. To. Use. It.

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Re: Backwards

Exactly. The Pi isn't "the BBC/Spectrum in 1982", it's "the 6502/Z80 in 1976". It's a hugely flexible *core* around which you build stuff.

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"the choice between not having a PC at all or having a computer that has this huge back catalog of software"

The promblem is, something in the region of 386% of users want to get their priated version of Microsoft Office working on it. If it won't do Microsoft Office (no, not Libre Offce, not not Open Office, it's Microsoft Office at work, we're taught "Office" at school), it's not a computer.

I used to bang out hundreds of pages of documentation with View on my Beeb, and a colleague was nonplussed at how I could fit "all that" on a 400K disk. "What do you do when you run out of space?" ieurinoo? I've got about 80 reports on this disk, probably space for another 30 (*FREE, bit of mental arithmetic, yeah that looks right), then I'll get another disk out of the box. He couldn't understand that what I was using Was Not Word.

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"If you took the Tube out would anybody care?"

YES!!!!! Me, and thousands like me. And the Tube wasn't even "in" the Beeb, it was just an exposed edge connector, barely anything more than the Spectrum's edge connector. Having it "in" or "out" had zero cost, because all the "Tube" was entirely external, but Just. Having. That. Edge. Connector just allowed so much stuff to happen IF YOU CHOSE TO.

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

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Yes, as soon as I got my hands on a Beeb, GOTOs vanished into the dark and distant past.

REPEAT:PRINT "Proper programming":UNTIL FALSE

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Re: Maybe

"As such, I occasionally harbour a fantasy of Sinclair doing similar, and releasing a set of standardised designs for ZX Spectrum peripherals - here's the sound-chip we recommend, here's BIOS support for up to 128k of RAM, here's a standardised API for mass storage devices, etc."

Gawd, even just "Here's a standard API for *ANYTHING*...."

I want to output to the printer stream. Ok, roll dice and call....... 1601. I want to load a file. 4D16 gives me.... 0556, but even that's only for tape, no way to say "no, not tape, some other device", you have to lovingly hand-craft your own code to do something else to just. save. to. somewhere. else. And if there's an error, BANG! right back into Basic, so not even a roll of 4D16 to help you, you have to envelope that in yet more code.

Any.

Other.

System.

LD registers

CALL entryblock[n]

Half my coding on the Spectrum was just coding *around* the Spectrum. Oh well, I spent Christmas redocumenting and repackaging my Spectrum libraries to lay a solid path through the swamp for other people.

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Re: "their substantial egos"

Most of the Hong Hong Stock Exchange was run on Beebs, and the Hong Kong Harbour Authority modelled water flows using a network of Beebs connected to monitoring equipment. And then all those factories where, under half an inch of oil, grime, and metal shavings, was a Beeb controlling the processes.

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

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Re: Maybe UKians should start sending back their tax returns ?

Promble in, most UKians don't do tax returns. About 80% of employees pay tax through PAYE and never see a tax return.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

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I had one job where I was brought in after the senior engineer had been fired, taking his knowledge with him. They had recruited a replacement, but he couldn't start for a couple of months. Nothing was documented, everything was in his head. I spent the time getting everything documented with backup printouts, and was confident that J. Random Stranger could walk in and take over and know how the system worked.

Office gossips beware – chitchat could choke your career chances

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Re: Believing office gossip....

I knew somebody who looked like a white Lenny Henry from Jamaica with the thickest accent I'd ever heard.

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Re: II always remind my staff

Yes. Look without seeing. Hear without listening.

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

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Please, HMRC, do not change the self-assessment web portal. Yes, it's clunky, it's old fashioned, but IT WORKS.

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

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Re: The scary thing about this...

I have a vague memory of some old TV drama where this was exactly the denument. I'm sure it was black&white, and it involved bank staff and mechanical adding machines. Everybody was kept behind to find who had been diddling the accounts. At the last point, one character frustratedly said "It's a simple as two" punches in 2 on the calculator "plus two" punches in plus 2 and cranks the handle - which displays 5.

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Re: So what was actually wrong?

More than that, you're thinking of transactions in a universe that functions differently to the one we live in. This is a well-known long-know problem, there is no way to know a message has not arrved at its destination. It's variously called The Two Generals Problem, or Caesar's Generals Problem. yes, understanding it is that old.

I wrote up this almost four years ago. While it is likely to not be the exact problem with Horizon, it is a near enough description to explain the problems:

In my understanding, what it was was:

Correct functioning:

PO sends ‘credit £x’

HQ receives ‘credit £x’

HQ credits account

HQ sends ‘acknowledge credit £x’

PO receives ‘acknowledge credit £x’

PO removes item from queue

Failed functioning:

PO sends ‘credit £x’

HQ receives ‘credit £x’

HQ credits account

HQ sends ‘acknowledge credit £x’

PO /doesn’t/ receive acknowledge

PO retries

PO sends ‘credit £x’

HQ receives ‘credit £x’

HQ credits account

HQ sends ‘acknowledge credit £x’

PO receives ‘acknowledge credit £x’

PO removes item from queue

PO now has one ‘credit £x’ recorded, but HQ has two ‘credit £x’ recorded.

It’s a classic network transaction confirmation problem. In fact, a Networking 001 problem. It’s not even undergraduate level concepts. How do you know where a failed message has failed? Has the message to HQ failed, or has the acknowledge failed? The solution is to either use a sequence chain, or *not* transfer ‘change’ messages, but transfer ‘updated balance’ messages:

PO sends ‘account balance is £x’

HQ receives ‘account balance is £x’

HQ updates account

HQ sends ‘acknowledge account balance is £x’

PO /doesn’t/ receive acknowledge

PO retries

PO sends ‘account balance is £x’

HQ receives ‘account balance is £x’

HQ updates account

HQ sends ‘acknowledge account balance is £x’

PO receives ‘acknowledge balance is £x’

PO removes item from queue

This results in the PO recording a balance update to £x and HQ recording a balance update to £x.

Of course, this has it’s own problems of multiple access/single resource (what happens if somebody else does a ‘balance is X’ between your retries) but is solid if you have exclusive access during the whole transaction. To do that you’d wrap it in ‘open for exclusive access’/’close for exclusive access’.

Tom Scott described it quite well here where it happened with ordering pizzas.

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Not just Ed.

Margaret Beckett 1997 to 1998

Peter Mandelson 1998 to 1998

Stephen Byers 1998 to 2001

Patricia Hewitt 2001 to 2005

Alan Johnson 2005 to 2006

Alistair Darling 2006 to 2007

Pat McFadden 2007 to 2009

John Hutton 2007 to 2008

Peter Mandelson 2008 to 2009

Edward Davey 2010 to 2012

Norman Lamb 2012 to 2012

Jo Swinson 2012 to 2013

Jenny Willott 2013 to 2014

Jo Swinson 2014 to 2015

Anna Soubry 2015 to 2016

Margot James 2016 to 2018

Andrew Griffiths 2018 to 2018

Kelly Tolhurst 2018 to 2020

Paul Scully 2020 to 2022

Jane Hunt 2022 to 2022

Dean Russell 2022 to 2022

Kevin Hollinrake 2022

All have questions to answer.

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

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That reminds me of the f***wits who don't understand "display sized to X" is not the same as "resize to X".

Last week I got an email with about three lines saying (paraphrased) "Thanks for the update. Bob." I wondered why it took ten seconds to open. I glanced at the inbox listing and wondered why it said (252M) at the end of the line. How TF is a three-line email 252M? Then I thought....uh oh.... There's a little image under the signiture line. Yep. Menu -> Display image. It was three times the width of my monitor, set to display in the email as 160 pixels wide.

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Re: Strange story about field testing

shik gho sun dai mgoi.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

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Re: Remote Access

Almost a decade ago I had a contract replacing post office counter hardware, and digging out my backups, the installation documentation is full of:

"stay on the phone until the Network Operations Centre remotely configures...."

"If the NOC cannot remotely resolve the issue, escalate to...."

It's not in the documentation I've dug out, but the final test was (along the lines of):

Test the system by doing a dummy transaction. Print a system balance. Enter a transaction using "VOID ITEM" as the product. When completed, void the transaction by doing X, Y, Z... Print a system balance to confirm it has reverted to the previous balance. Note in sign-off sheet.

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

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it's not not knowing about Open Office or Libre Office, but not being *able* to obtain Open Office or Libre Office. I've worked on some installations where any connection to the outside would was severed and without WordPad being already on the machine it was impossible to read anything other than plain text. Hell, I've had to (attempt to) do system admin on installations where my only access was a *user* account.

Road to Removal: A blueprint for yanking billions of tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere

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If it's settled, it's not science.

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"It'll also cost billions, but perhaps a price worth paying?"

Compared to what? If the other option costs less than billions, the answer is: no.