* Posts by J.G.Harston

3710 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Automation needed

"Rod"'s situation seems to be similar. An engineer taken on as a technician. Sadly, all too common. "Wotyer complaining about, it's "computers" you said you want to work in "computers"".

The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Amazon 3rd Party Seller

I ordered a custom printed sweatshirt from some company, and received underpants!

Where's the gnome icon?

Botched migration resulted in a great deal: One for the price of two

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Back in the day

I've still got several generations of cable TV box going back to my first Yorkshire Cable "Scientific Atlanta 8600" set-top box + remotes piling up in my loft. Yorkshire Cable, TeleWest, NTL, Virgin. It's feels "wrong" to chuck them away, but there's nothing I can use them for.

How Arm aims to squeeze device makers for cash rather than pocket pennies for cores

J.G.Harston Silver badge

"I make steel that I sell to car makers. Hey! Those car makers then sell their cars to customers! I wanna slice of that!"

Errors logged as 'nut loose on the keyboard' were – ahem – not a hardware problem

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: I see this a lot

I TOLD YOU I'D BE BACK

IT depts struggle with skills shortages despite Big Tech layoffs

J.G.Harston Silver badge

"So back when I wor a lad, and computers were fun, the advice was to do physics/maths/engineering not CS cos you could pick up that programming stuff yourself anyway."

I wish wish wish wish my Careers Advice Tutor (or anybody really) had known that and told me that in the mid-1980s. I and my friends had been "doing computing" for half a decade, to us writing programs and plugging in hardware and talking to it and getting different computers to talk to each other was "doing computing", so naturally upon going to university I applied for "Computing" courses. Only to get there and for three years wonder "when are we going to do some, yknow, *actual* computing?" When what I didn't realise was that "computing" is "driving a car" not "automotive engineering". And certainly the careers advice staff were completely out of their depth. With six years of designing and building computer hardware and software, and three summer jobs doing same, my careers advice was "go into local government admin".

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: How many are Bullshit Jobs?

But we *need* diversity, we need the whole spectrum of people from competent to crap.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: This is where you realise that knocking up a webpage in Dreamweaver*

I don't yet do PHP writing often enough to prod me to do something about it, but the write, upload, test, cycle does get a bit annoying, especially when I forget the upload bit and wonder why my edit hasn't made any changes. Plain HTML is so much simpler, edit, refresh, edit, refresh, don't need no steeking online access. ;)

J.G.Harston Silver badge

"Twitter, which has fired more than half on its payroll"

Yebbut, how many of those were IT staff?

India gives itself a mission to lead the 'Global South' into 6G era

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Last time I checked, India was significantly north of the equator.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: The good old days :)

At my university, a pair of crocodile clips and a spare handset was all that was needed.

Who, me?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Actual EU benefit

I quite like my lasangna without horse. How'd that go for ya?

How the Internet Archive faces potential destruction at the hands of Big Four publishers

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Best place on earth for radio recordings.

Those very Amstrad, Spectrum, BBC, ICL things are copyrighted. Remember: copyright lasts for 50 to 70 years.

The Stonehenge of PC design, Xerox Alto, appeared 50 years ago this month

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: sending a message instead of calling a function

The recipient is specified in both of them. "jim".

Ok:

hey_do_thing(jim, 6); // call function to tell jim to do something with parameter '6'

hey_to_thing(jim,6); // send message to jim to do something sending '6'

The mention of delegating responsiblity to the other end - well, that's *exactly* what passing the thing on to jim is doing *anyway*. Otherwise it would never make the function call in the first place. "How does the caller know the internals of the callee?" Wall, again, that's exactly why it is just passing it over to jim, the caller neither knows nor cares what jim's internal structure is. "Buffering data..." Again, exactly what just passing out of the caller to somebody else that knows what it is doing.

As I said originally, everything people attempt to explain OO programming to be just end describing what I'd say: well, that's just.... /normal/... programming, doesn't everybody do it that way *anyway*? You want to send to a printer, *you* don't send to the printer, you just pass the data to a printer buffer, and the printer "thing" that knows about printers does the actual talk-to-printer stuff. You want to sent to a serial port? Again, you just putbuf(serout, byte); and the thing that knows about serial interfaces does the serial interface stuff. You want to send a message to another computer on a network? net_tx(dest, data, length). You want to write to a file? write(file, data, length).

It all appears to be strawman arguments. You're starting from assuming the *caller* is fidding with printer I/O hardware, or networking hardware, etc., and advocating the caller should just pass that work on to somebody else, BUT WITHOUT FIRST TELLING ME THAT'S THE STRAWMAN YOU'RE STARTING FROM, so of course I have no idea what on earth you're waffling on about. The strawman does not exist, and what you're prosletising is already normal standard practice, of course you don't try to do the thing-specific stuff, you call (or message) a thing-understander that understands the thing and does the thing-frobbing itself.

This may sound confused and rambling, but that's because everything about "OO - the great new thing" seems to make no sense in the first place. It's not the "great new thing", it's the normal.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Smalltalk

The idea of SENDING A MESSAGE instead of CALLING A FUNCTION

This is one of my blind spots whenever people attempt to explain OO programming. Every time I try and work out what makes it different from non-OO programming it just comes across as buzzword bingo.

What's the difference between

hey_jim_do_this(6); // call function, passing "6" to it

and

hey_jim_do_this(6); // send a message, passing the message "6" to it

?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Proper paper orientation

But my eyes are horizontally mounted, not vertically....

Workers don't want these humanoid robots telling them to be happy

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Not a good idea for people who have a very high tolerance before they snap

The tantrum behavoir only occurs due to the asshat morons who designed the equipment. It is smash the equipment, or find the person who designed it and apply a clue-by-four. Unforetunately, there are far too many systems in existance where their deficiences have zero impact on the people who let them loose, so they have no feedback to change their behavoir.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Not a good idea for people who have a very high tolerance before they snap

I had a tablet computer that failed due to the percussive disciplining I gave it due to it refusing to to as it was told. If the user interface does not respond to human interaction Before. Doing. Anything. Else then it is a clear case of software fraud. If there is no response that is explicit instruction that you haven't pressed it properly. So you press again, and if there is no response it is even clearing INSTRUCTION to press EVEN HARDER to get the damn thing to work. If it STILL does not respond it is SCREAMING at you to HAMMER THE ****** THING AS HARD AS POSSIBLE.

Sheesh., H.T.F. does this FUNDAMENTAL part of interface interaction keep get not being taought to beginners before they even get anywhere near any development, having been known about for centuries?

If there is no tactile feedback an interface it must Must MUST *MUST* abandon ******EVERYTHING****** and respond ******NOW****** to tell the user they have in fact actully pressed something. Not 'oh wait, I'm busy', not 'let me just flush this cache', not 'push it into a queue and something will check it later', ****NOW****. Otherwise the system is *explicity* *INSTRUCTING* the user that they *HAVEN'T* pressed something and that they *MUST* try again. If the light switch doesn't move under your finger, it is an explict instruction to try again properly. If the door handle doesn't move, it is an explict instruction to try again. If the wheely chair doesn't move when pushed, it is an explicit instruction to try again. IF THE FUCKING TOUCH SCREEN DOES NOT RESPOND TO TOUCHES IT IS AN EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION TO KEEP HAMMERING AT THE FUCKING THING UNTIL IS FUCKING DOES RESPOND, OR SMASHES INTO PIECES, WHICHEVER COMES FIRST.

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Speaking Of Ancient Storage Methods .....

* Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?

* No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.

Datacenters still a boys' club, staffing shortages may change that

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Why on earth would you be doing a degree to progress into a job as an IT labourer? Conversely, WTH are employers recruiting their IT labourers from the pool of people with degrees?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

It doesn't matter that you can get away with paying women less for the same work

No you can't. That's illegal.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

And in other news, waste collection is mostly a boy's club, road mending is mostly a boy's club, sewege gonging is mostly a boy's club. When are we going to get women forced into these jobs to socially engineer gender equality?

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: This is poor planning

It's especially annoying when directed to use a coloured button when the coloured buttons are on a mucky keypad, such as a phone. "Press the red button". Which one's that? The mucky puke coloured one, or the mucky puke coloured one. Just *****y say "left" or "right" dammit!!!!

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Hold on, doesn't everybody glance around in a new building to check where the emergency exits are? There was a fire drill in a building I'd only been in four days, and I went straight onto automatic and trotted out down the stairs to the evac point. I was later told off for bringing my cup of tea with me - but I'd been walking from the kitchen back to my office with it when the alarm went off. So, naturally, I didn't continue into the office just to put my tea down before leaving the building.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

Electric kettles are uncommon because no one drinks tea.

But Mercans drink coffee. HTH do they get the water hot then?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

From that linked story, it's not the using a toaster to make cheese-on-toast that's unsafe, it's the turning on a cooker THEN LEAVING THE ROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a lodger who did exactly that. Put bread under the grill to make toast, then, I have no idea how, simply walked out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Sheesh. As said repeatedly elsewhere, have these people never met any actual humans?

SBOMs should be a security staple in the software supply chain

J.G.Harston Silver badge

My potato chips never come in a packet, they come in an open paper bag or cardboard tray.

Service desk tech saved consultancy Capita from VPN meltdown, got a smack for it

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: The old truth

Whenever we do an OS rollout, at some point we disable access from the old OS, and the service desk is instructed to tell users: you've been reminded more than a dozen times to schedule an OS rollout, *NOW* will you come in to the service centre?

Bitcoin mining rig found stashed in school crawlspace

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Crawl space? Come on, this is a techy publication, them's Jefferies Tubes!

Tech job vacancies hamper England's digital health plans

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Right on time, in today's emails:

"We have seen your CV and think this would be an ideal position: .... you will take calls from clients and assign the problem to the right team to fix."

Sorry, but did you not even actually *read* my CV? I do the "go out and do the fix" bit not the "take the calls and pass them on" bit.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

There's also a problem in that the recruiters think "IT" is all the same. I'm a field engineer, and keep getting agencies trying to push me into service desk jobs. That's not only not my skill set, it's not my aptitude, I don't "do" random people calling me at random.

Results are in for biggest 4-day work week trial ever: 92% sticking with it

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Nope

You're lucky that public transport was more time efficient than driving. Most of the jobs I've had, when I've had the car away for repairs or tests and taken the bus it's often taken four or five times longer. One job 45 minutes away would have turned into the absolute earliest bus available getting me into work at 1pm.

99 year old man says cryptocurrency is for idiots

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Cryptocurrency wasn't allowed by governments. It was not *dis*allowed by government. Things that are not already known about cannot be banned, and unless you are omniscient you cannot know what does not yet exist.

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Who the hell doesn't rinse the dishes after cleaning? Do they enjoy Fairy*-flavoured meals?

*other detergents are available

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Steves Failure

The Ruperts need training properly. Otherwise they'll end up having an accident with a grenade.

Subsidies? All UK chip industry needs is tax, rule tweaks, claims rightwing thinktank

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Low tax, small state

"It would be good if the proponents of low tax, small state economies could point to any place in the world or any point in time where these have actually worked. "

Hong Kong. Singapore. Taiwan. Japan. South Korea.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

J.G.Harston Silver badge
Mushroom

Sparks have it drilled into them (ha!) that all cable runs must be horizontal and vertical between outlets so they are known to be in known defined zones, and all defined zones are defined to have cables in them whether they do or not. Unfortunately, too many decorators are oblivious to this and assume power arrives at an outlet through the air.

I had one job where the kitchen fitters had removed all the old units - so they could clearly see the rising main and consumer unit - and then in the process of fitting the new units drilled straight through all six cables directly above the consumer unit.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

on-call is a noun. You need a verb there.

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: We've already got digital pounds.

I've got a couple of RBS one pound notes, which I saved last time I ventured northwards.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

We've already got digital pounds. I've not used a pound note for decades. Even my window cleaner asks to be paid digitally nowadays.

Eager young tearaway almost ruined Christmas with printer paper

J.G.Harston Silver badge

ARGH!!!

This really gets my goat, people using completely incorrect, misleading, or damaging terminology. The one that particularly annoy(s|ed) me was programs or instructors instructing users to "hit" the keyboard.

" Hit SPACE to continue "

# It's telling me to hit the SPACE key

* Go on then

# Are you sure?

* Yes, go one

# err....

SMASH!

# but (sob) you (sob) told me to!

When I was teaching and such software appeared, I would hunt it down and extinguishing it from all disks, write random data to the sectors, and then again just to make sure. How *DARE* you instruct my users to destroy our equipment. I'll come around and smash up your computer shall I?

Wind, solar power outstrip fossil fuel generation for EU

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: I'm all right Jack...

Exactly, we've done all the properies that are do-able, we are now left with those odd and sods where the engineering makes it a fool's errand to attempt to do anything with it. Go on, who's going to put solid wall insulation on the Tower of London, or Hardwick Hall?

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Policy driven

I can't speak for other countries (though indirect knowledge tells me it's similar), but in the UK we don't have a road tax, we have a vehicle tax, and the funds raised from it is less than a quarter of what is spent on roads infrastructure.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: I'm all right Jack...

We've been insulating homes for decades. We're now getting to scraping the bottom of the barrel with pointless and engineeringly inpossible targets, and the last scraps of mindless hold-outs. My Dad did his house in 1985, I did my house in 1995, when I was a local councillor we did the entire council stock in 2005. IT'S DONE.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Policy driven

"Subsidies"? You mean, perfectly normal cost-of-production is a cost of production, and is subtracted from revenue from sales to result in profit.

Shock horror! The cost of the bread I bought to make the sandwich I sold is deducted from the money I make from selling it to calculate my profits.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Re: Policy driven

Europe does not possess sufficient fossil or nuclear fuel for its energy requirements.

Dunno about Europe, but Britain is an island of coal floating in a sea of oil. It's policy choice not to use it, not a shortage of resources.

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Wonderful. Time to liberate the market so that expensive fuel supplies are killed off by consumer choice.

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

J.G.Harston Silver badge

The ones that piss me off are the IT Service Desk jobs that want rights to my BBC code.

The wages of sin aren't that great if you're a developer choosing the dark side

J.G.Harston Silver badge

Set loose the customers of Kaspersky!