Posts by DJV

Off topic; but has anyone else noticed that their little coloured badge thingie has disappeared?

Have you tried looking down the back of the sofa?

Re: Thank you!

They should be fined on the "wheat/rice and chessboard" principle. On the first day of non-compliance they should be fined one penny/cent (it probably doesn't matter which), the second at two pennies or cents, the third at four pennies/cents and doubling every day of non-compliance until the company realises just how soon they will be made completely bankrupt. That should focus their attention a little bit!

Re: There ought to be a rubber stamp for this

Any institution uttering that (or similar) phrases should be subject to an immediate multi-million $/£/€ fine!

Re: Was Object Oriented Programming involved?

Maybe, in this case, OOP stands for Orrible Oracle Programming!

"I have used ChatGPT to generate example snippets of how to do a specific thing, but I have been completely unable to get it to produce even a relatively basic program that is functional"

Back in the 1990s when I was doing a computing degree at university, someone assigned to our first-year group project also produced code like that. A quick glance at his attempts at coding would reveal several compiler-breaking syntax errors. "Did this compile?" I'd ask, knowing full well that it couldn't have. "Yes," he would lie.

Re: merge with Boeing

So... send print job from computer to new HP/Boeing printer. After 3 pages, the printer software decides that all the cartridges are now empty (whether or not they have any ink in them), all the doors on the printer fall off and an oxygen mask dropping down somewhere inside the printer causes a paper jam. Sounds about right...

Re: Mess with locks = big nope

Rats, squirrels, politicians - you've always got to clear up after they've been in your systems.

Re: I am beginning to think . . .

It's about time that these people start to understand that air-gapping confidential data might be a good idea.

Re: SyncToy

I moved over to using FreeFileSync instead - even lovelier!

Re: "take responsibility" We are taught that in politics all the time

Pity no one ever teaches the "grab the money and run" politicians that!

Re: You really wonder how some of these people manage to breathe.

I think they have instructions tattooed onto the inside of their eyelids.

Re: generic evocatingness

Oh yes, we've got lumps of it round the back.

Re: It's deja-vu all over again ...

Oh God, yes, this!

Client: We didn't want to disturb you by asking for a new custom field so we put the customer's ebay reference number in the phone number field as ebay won't tell us the phone number on orders so it didn't matter.

Client later on: How many of our customers are ebay customers?

Me: Dunno, I could have told you if you'd let me spend all of 5 minutes putting in a custom ebay reference number in the first place and not used the phone field.

Client: Erm, can you separate them out?

Me: Possibly. It will take a while as I've got to write a program to figure out how to tell the difference between the two...

Me a short while later: What are these types of entries? They match neither a phone number format nor an ebay ID.

Client: Oh, they're Amazon reference numbers - we, er, didn't want to bother you...

Me: AAARRRRGHH!!!!

Re: The perfect combination

Absolutely! I left Vodafone because of their lousy (customer) service for Three (a slightly lesser evil) via a short stint with EE, so I am not at all chuffed to hear about this merger. Are there any good mobile providers left in the UK?

Re: Office needed from time to time

Oh yes, I've suffered from that as well when at university. Back then (mid-1990s) there was always a rush to secure a computer for working on - either Mac or PC - you had to grab what was available. The EXACT same version of Word could never display the same document identically on one type of machine if it had been saved on the other (and sometimes not even on the same type, either).

Re: I'm thinking Microsoft need to look at their testing process

I'm thinking Microsoft need to look FOR their testing process - it's got AWOL!

Re: Cover them all

Hmmm, I wonder if your downvoter used to be a Chinese student...

Re: Electronics isn't what it used to be

Fully agree, Martin.

I worked in TV/Audio repair between 1973 and 1984. In that time I went from working on large wooden-box chassis TVs where pretty much everything could be replaced (valves (tubes for leftpondians) in sockets, several modular boards that were still individually repairable, testing and replacing individual components etc.) - to, one day, taking the back off a plastic-cased 14" portable TV and wondering where the hell they'd managed to hide the main PCB! In this case, it was a tiny thing mounted high up on the left-hand side and almost completely out of sight.

Around the same time (1984) a TV came into the workshop. Two of its main characteristics were that it had one great big chip on a long, narrow and rather flimsy PCB. The other was that it had a mains transformer mounted on a bracket that stuck out of the back of the main plastic front casing instead of somewhere else within the casing itself. Later on, I found out why. If you removed the transformer (sometimes needed to get at and remove the PCB), the whole TV fell flat on its face as the centre of gravity of the rest of the set (including the picture tube) was further forward than the front feet!

Here it is in full - it's called "The Plan"

https://funnyshit.com.au/the_plan.html

It should be essential reading for all levels from the lowest worker to the CEO!

Re: Taking the ...

The Internet Archive should charge Google per click-through.

Re: when it's already basically the same as Chrome

Yeah, that's the problem. Thank goodness for CustomCSSforFx which means it's possible to make it look like it did around version 50 with a properly usable interface!

Re: Acronym Meaning (or maybe a Father Ted/Jack moment?)

G = Girls

A = Arse (yes, NOT Ass)

That means we are only missing the F!

Re: Your most often-used shortcuts should be pnned into the Taskbar

My most often used shortcuts are pinned to my Quick Start toolbar, which has a much greater capacity for icons than the restricted taskbar. Even though MS tried to remove Quicj Start in W7, too many programs relied on it being there and, until W11, it was always possible to resurrect it easily. Under W11 it can still be added but it takes a few extra hacks. The taskbar is just for the RUNNING programs, like in W95 to XP, which is how I want to use my computer.

You were lucky.

We had to chisel zeros and ones into stone tablets...

Re: Bullshit?

Don't you mean horseshit?

Re: irate BOFH filling in squares

No, a true BOFH would make sure ALL error messages appearing on screens would be QR images and then supply graph paper for people to report errors to him (refusing to accept any other kind - photos of said screen being automatically rejected). But, of course, the QR code on screen would have some subtle code running behind it so that it would flip the occasional square at random intervals making sure that the pattern copied by the user would never match the one on the screen, thus rendering all the error codes invalid due to, ahem, "user copying error".

Re: Take responsibility

Having gone through several cloudy services, I'm currently using a combination of the following: OneDrive, DropBox and Filen.io (yes, these three will all work on the same computer at the same time).

The latter is by far the fastest for uploads and, so far, hasn't glitched on me. My requirements are modest so I've been only using the free versions of all three. However, Filen.io's prices do look very reasonable with a €35.99 lifetime payment currently for 200GB (this is a Black Friday deal).

Others I've tried in the past include Box but their free space remaining has a habit of not recalculating after you delete files and you "run out of space" when, in reality, you should have plenty free; iceDrive but this doesn't play nice with the excellent FreeFileSync program that I use a lot; nextCloud which had various issues that I couldn't get resolved; and pCloud, which also had issues which meant that backups would randomly fail to sync.

I've never tried Google Drive but that's mainly because I loath them as a company!

Re: Search disaster

I gave up with Windows Search after that disastrous update a few years back when they ripped out the search that almost worked and replaced it with the current mess.

Try using "Everything" from Void Tools - far superior.

https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

Re: " they have a clear incentive to keep iPhones working"

Yup, keep believing that as opposed to more obvious: "they have a clear incentive to keep making more profit."