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* Posts by J.G.Harston

3719 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009

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Still got a job at the end of this week? You're lucky, as more layoffs hit the tech industry

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Re: No poets got fired last week.

Problem is, if you asked me "what is Wireshark" I'd say "Absolutely NO idea". But if you sat me in front of it and asked "have you ever used this" I'd say "yeah, network analyser, used these things for years, used this one in my last three jobs".

I have NO IDEA wtf the applications are CALLED, I just *USE* the ****ing things. *Especially* when the name of the thing gives absolutely no idea WTH it does. "Wireshark" to me says some sort of attack system, something whose primary purpose is damage and destruction. Something to avoid, and root out of your systems and destroy from high order, in the class as "loan shark".

When recruiters get this into their heads that the correct question is "do you know how to do user administration?" and not "have you experience of Folder Panel?", *then* /maybe/ we can get some sanity.

There was one job I had recently where after six months of so of using the ticket management system somebody asked me "what experience have you got of &^%$*^%$&^%?" Absolutely no idea. Turns out that was the name of the ticket management system I'd been using for six months. What they SHOULD have asked was "what experience have you got with TICKET MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS!!!!¬!!"!. not some bollock marketing bullshit garbage nameology.

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Want a clean energy transition? Better start putting cash into electrical grid

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Re: It's not even 2024 and 1.5C is already slipping away...

I *never* turn on my house heating. I have a magic device called a Ther Mo Stat that does it for me. I'm not surprised people don't know about them, they've only been around for about five centuries.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: Serious question

the idea of having access to basic services within a 15 minute walk or bike ride

Who's going to force my local council to build another 90 schools so they are all within 15 minutes?

Who's going to force the NHS to build another 115 hospitals in my city so thay are all within 15 minutes?

Who's going to force B&Q to build another 100 branches so they are all within 15 minutes?

Who's going to force ForgeMasters to open up 500 one-man forges so they are all within 15 minutes?

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J.G.Harston Silver badge

The important question is what it will cost if we *don't* spend $600bn a year? If the cost of not-doing is less than the cost of doing, then doing is the wrong thing to do.

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Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China

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At least these are objectively physical measurements, and not the previous subjective "could be used for military purposes" crap. A PENCIL "could" be used for military purposes.

But, yes, all it means is that manufacturers will make XKC4799 versions that will be under the XKC4800 limit. Could be as simple as a small delay line on the the clock input, or even just document the device as "2.4GHz" instead of "2.5GHz". How can they stop the end-user overclocking a part after they've bought it? I got my 25MHz ARM3 running at 33MHz perfectly happily for 20+ years.

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Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

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None of this means "the government was asleep on the job". The government doesn't manage data transmission between different health bodies, those health bodies manage that. And, in the article itselt, nowhere does it mention anything about the government, it clearly solely identifies the responsibility with the management of the various bodies directing the data movements. "Incompetent driver drives into wall, government at fault"?

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Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

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Re: Technical question - advice politely requested

Shirley induction heating works by inducing heat in the target, so the target has to be metal. Water is not metal. From hearsay an induction hob is cold to the touch because it doesn't get hot, it induces heat in the metal pan placed on it. Any heat on the hob is from transmission from the metal pan from contact with the hob.

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Re: Start right, now

We did have these standards years ago - the Parker Morris standards would have covered them, but they were abolished in 1980 to "reduce the cost of housing".

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Presumably they already know they need to open the kitchen window when cooking/bathroom window when bathing? That vast majority of in-home damp is due to the occupants abusing the infrastructure.

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Re: Start right, now

"So why not mandate that all new houses built from (say) 2025 meet a much higher standard**"

'cos people won't pay. Offered the choice of "this house is D rated and costs £100K" vs "this identical house is A rated and costs £150K", nobrainer, people are going to buy the £100K house. People are only going to AFFORD the £100K house. Mandating that the only houses available are the £150K ones is mandating making houses to expensive for people to afford.

....but who wants plebs to be able to afford homes? They should live in hovels and LIKE IT.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: Hydrogen in pipes

Town gas was supplied at much lower pressures at 0.8 ounces per square inch. Natural gas is supplied at 5 times the pressure, leakage is proportional to (molecule size)^2 so pushing hydrogen down the gas main would leak 64 times as much as methane. If you reduced the pressure down to Town Gas levels to get the leakage the same the pressure would be so low it would be unusable at the consumer end.

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Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

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It's the old burning toast + smoke detector problem. Stop burning toast? Nah! Disable the smoke detector.

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Excel Hell II: If the sickness can't be fixed, it must be contained

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Re: It it's not broke, we'll fix that come the next update!

Has it become an email client yet? :)

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: Its not just Excel

As in "play Nintendo". WTF is "playing Nintendo"? You don't play "Nintendo", you play GTA or Fifa22 or Subbuteo or PacMan *WITH* the ****ing Nintendo.

FGS, you don't play "cricket bat", you don't play "racket", you don't play "coins", you play *WITH* a cricket bat, you play *WITH* a racket, you play *WITH* coins.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: You should be ashamed of this article

I've been on IT installation jobs where I've been the only person who turned up with any (hardware) tools. Often several days in succession! You'd think that on finding on Monday that they need a screwdriver, on Tuesday they'd turn up with one? And Wednesday, Thursday and Friday? Or if they borrowed a box spanner from their polite colleague who HAD brought tools to site, they WOULDN'T CHEW THE HEAD OFF INTO UNUSABILITY BY NOT USING IT PROPERLY!

Sorry, that learned me, I never lend out my tools now.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge

I've got the skills to do a lot of that. Sadly it all falls down on: who's gonna pay me? Being alive costs money, in order to be able to afford to stay alive I need to be paid for my labour. I could do it as an unpaid hobby, but again: who's gonna pay me to be able to afford to do this unpaid hobby?

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Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

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Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

I never seem to have the problem with the RISC OS filer, and Delete is next to Rename there as well.

A few seconds fiddling around has shown the answer.

On Windows you do:

Menu -> select Delete

Menu -> select Rename -> new dialogue.

On RISC OS you do:

Menu -> point to menu item -> follow arrow -> select Delete

Menu -> point to menu item -> follow arrow -> point to Rename -> FOLLOW ANOTHER ARROW! into dialogue

Windows falls down as both Rename and Delete are 'click on menu item' actions.

RISC OS wins as Rename and Delete are different physical actions. Delete is a 'click on item' action, Rename is a *not* 'click on item' action. At NO point do you *click* on something in order to rename an object, until *AFTER* the Rename dialogue has been completed.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

We older folk created the ****ing technology in the first place!

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

No, they can't *afford* to work for peanuts.

I've just seen seasonal staff at Asda being advertised paying more than my last NHS IT job.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

Yeah gods, the online booking systems sucks so much it blows.

When I first used the online system, I'd been working in NHS IT and actually installed the IT equipment in my local surgery. So I took the opportunity to get my patient login details, went home and confidently went online. I selected 'Sign in', and entered my details. Invalid user or password! Tried again. Same result. Went back to surgery and asked for updated logon details.

Went home again. Went to website, selected 'Sign in'.... same result. Argh!!!! WTF's happening? Went back to surgery, explained carefully the problems, and asked for updated logon details.

Now, so far this has spread over about six weeks trying to do this. So, again I go to website and try to log on. STILL DOESN'T ***** WORK!!!!

Frustrated, I started just randomly navigating around the site to see what I could find without logging in. I can't remember the details, but somewhere I selected something and it asked for my logon details. Which I entered. Which worked. WTF? Ok, great, I can check my immunation record. yay!

At some point I went back to the home page and the 'Sign in' link was still there. Odd, shouldn't it say 'Sign out' now that I'm logged in. I selected it. It asked for my logon details. Odd. Went backwards to the immunation record and refreshed the page. Yeah, I'm still logged in. Went back to the Sign In page. Yep, still asking me to log in, even though I am logged in.

On a thought I looked at the page source. It was processing a login to nhs.net. ie, the STAFF LOGON service. WHAT the BLEEDING F????

So, the most prominant and only visible 'Sign in' option on the website is the ****ING STAFF LOGON PORTAL?!?!!!!????!!!?? The website that patients are directed to to 'log on to access their online details'.

Somebody please go to NHS IT with a clue-by-four and apply to the guilty parties.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge

Yeah Glod, this is something you DO NOT DO MANUALLY!

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SpaceX accused of paying less to women and minority engineers

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Most people in Britain don't realise how low the salaries for most jobs have got...

Oh, I know very very well:

Role: Senior Business Support Officer

Hours 37 hours per week

As a Senior Business Support Officer, you will have a wide range of responsibilities, playing a crucial role in providing day-to-day supervision and support to Business Support staff, ensuring efficient and effective financial, business process, document production, and excellent customer services support to both internal and external customers of Children's Services.

blah blah blah ... £11.59 per hour.

That's less than £22,000 per year. Minimum wage gets you about £20,000.

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Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

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A mermaid?

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Tweaked Space Shuttle Main Engine gets ready for final testing

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So, this is the second run of the RS-25 engines? So.... RS252? :D

RS252... RS252... Computer Interface.... RS252....

God, I feel old.

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City council Oracle megaproject got a code red – and they went live anyway

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Is Birmingham Council allowed to steal loads of other people's property in order to pay off their own debts?

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Datacenters face double dilemma of supply issues and a need for speed

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If there's such a skills shortage, where are the job adverts? Data Centre jobs are conspicious in my having never seen vacancies for in all the vacancies feeds and head-hunting contacts I get.

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Techies at Europe's biggest council have 8 weeks to pull finance reports from Oracle system

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Why would straddling ward boundaries be an issue? Wards are things created *within* council boundaries, not things that are used to build council boundaries.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge

Europe's biggest council? Greater London is bigger than Brum shirley?

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

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In one job I had, it was oh so easy to knock the side of the mouse against the side of the keyboard as you were motoring around the display, and mouse buttons were such that pressing the *side* would activate them. That job involved plenty of £&&^%$$£££### Ctrl-Zs

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Beta driver turned heads in the hospital

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But I can't make my display as tall as would make the contents visible.

Even zooming out doesn't fix it, as as well as the content becoming too small to read, the sites re-size their window furniture to make it fill the same absolute amount of real estate as before.

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It's worse than that, landscape displays are getting wider and wider and wider and wider, and Teh Webs are obsessed with it. With command tabs at the top and status info at the bottom, you end up looking through a one-inch high letterbox.

If you want to stretch as wide as possible, put your bloody control functions along the damn side, so the valuable uppy-downy real estate is usable! Dammit this paragraph in this posting occupies a SINGLE LINE!

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Norway wants Facebook behavioral advertising banned across Europe

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You mean, people advertising fishing equipment will be banned from only advertising in Fishing News, they'll be forced to advertise in The Grocer and Carpentry World? Advertisers target their adverts at people interested in the adverts, shock horror!

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Why can't datacenter operators stop thinking about atomic power?

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"Atomic power"? What is this, the 1950s? Or is the dread word "nuclear" just too scary?

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How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

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Re: Cleaning Printers that are full of dust

And they all thought they were going to Fuchal!

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J.G.Harston Silver badge
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Re: Nasty IT places

I did the Channel 5 retuning gig in 1997, there were some houses where after kneeling down in front of the video/TV setup, you couldn't get up again as you were glued to what passed as a carpet.

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Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

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Google Maps still claims that A165 Osgodby Hill still exists even though it's been at the bottom of the sea for over a decade.

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Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

Wait, what? You can feed back to Google that their maps are wrong? When did that happen? And more importantly, *HOW* does one do that?

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So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale'

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Bloody morons

If you *know* something is possible, as demonstrated by it being on the market, it is simply a matter of engineering time to make it yourself.

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UK courts award CGI £60M deal to keep ancient tech alive

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How do I get on this gravy train? I've got loads of heritage IT skills.

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Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

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The various effects is why I always enforce a tea break on anybody who gets zapped. The enforced inactivity gives time to monitor for adverse effects and time for the shock (physical, psycological) to wear off, and the amount of time for a cuppa is a convenient rule of thumb.

And, yes, you do get bored out of your mind being forced to sit there drinking a cup of tea when you instinctively want to get back to work.

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Re: Should this be so easy?

This is why I bite my tongue whenever I find the phrase "kettle lead" moving towards my speech centres when refering to a C13 IEC lead, as too many people who should know better really do think they are the same thing.

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UK civil servants – hopefully including those spending billions on tech – to skill up in STEM

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Chemistry ain't engineering.

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J.G.Harston Silver badge

I think the last national politician to really understand engineering was Stanley Baldwin who pushed through the contruction of the national electricity grid. Everything since then has been resting on previous accomplishments.

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These days you can teach old tech a bunch of new tricks

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I needed a new "console" for my shop's CCTV system, and I had an old laptop somebody had given me, so I spent a couple of hours installing the open licence Windows XP reviewed here a few weeks ago on it. Works perfectly and brings back to life some otherwise unusable hardware, as well as bringing back memories of the install process. :)

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Having slammed brakes on hiring, Google says it no longer needs quite so many recruiters

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"Hundreds about to find out first hand how the tough the job market is right now"

At the same time employers are screaming blue in the face that they can't find any employees, and government ****MUST**** allow them to import foreigners.

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Arm's lawyers want to check assembly expert's book for trademark missteps

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Re: An assembly language expert

After getting up to my elbows in the abohorence of the structure of the ARM64 binary ISA compared to the 32-bit ISA, Arm seem to be determined to self-destruct. They seem to have dug out an 1990s i86 opcode manual and thought "hold my beer".

Edit: On a spur, I dug into my ARM64 ISA docs that I was thrashing through when coding up an ARM64 assembler. 204 PAGES! WTF? How on earth can an ISA binary encoding description be 204 pages of 1192 individual instructions? ARM32 fitted on a single page of A5. Another reference squashed it down to 58 pages, but FIFTY-EIGHT PAGES??!!!??

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Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

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Re: LA are all the same

Oh yeah, Sheffield is supposed to have a habour management department, and Hull is supposed to have a mountain rescue liason.

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Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

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There's always somebody. Just two weeks ago I was the only tech who turned up on site with any tools - THREE DAYS IN A ROW!. The others kept snaffling my tools, one of which was a multi-head spanner which they proceeded to completely wreck by not applying it to the bolt heads correctly, and just wrenching away until they killed the spanner.

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Re: Plus ca change....

At least 9D serial and 9D joystick are the opposite gender, so it's physically impossible to plug the wrong one in.

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Re: Check the power supply

"turned on the cooker .... she had then gone outside"

This is something I just cannot understand. How on earth do people manage to be ALIVE while simultaneously missing such an huge part of their brain?

You never ever EVER *EVER* walk away from a turned-on cooker. You don't need /teaching/ that, it's as obvious as breathing.

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