Posts by Robert Carnegie

Re: Trumps cut

Apparently Donald Trump is not paid salary for being President. I can only suppose that it would be conflict of interest if he was paid.

Re: "Floating"? Really?

But anchor came there none?

Some reports put the word "floating" in quotes in the headline. And I found this description in one online: 'The store is completely surrounded by water so that it appears to be floating."

A special waiting room for people who want to get the waiting over quicker :-)

Timely, though

Half past six (night not morning?) sounds like past the time that you should fuck off. (But did you?)

"a hack on the production system"

Indirectly. Through the company's meatware.

Re: Dash cam?

The main use of dashcam is to sell footage of the incident to show on TV - or so it appears. Once off the ground (that is a point), an aeroplane isn't going to see much that's interesting and that isn't going to be covered by the accident investigation anyway. And anything on board costs fuel to carry.

Re: What do you get given .....

It's an excellent shovel. It did a fine job.

Re: And the point is...

Yeah, each password that I use at work signs me onto a single system.

Re: Maybe that was the first time in the UK....

U.S. elections are weird. The U.K. managed pretty well to cover elections with something called a "Swingometer". But I don't see the point anyway in staying up at night to hear results, unless you expect to have to leave the country suddenly and so you need to know.

Clive James wrote U. K. TV reviews for over a decade, and a lot of them were converted to a sort of epistolary history of them medium; I could get mine out to see most of the election TV shows described, and whether and how they had computers in.

Re: Procedures don't work

I think it's still considered news-worthy when a high omnibus tries to drive under a low bridge, and... doesn't. In the UK anyway. I think we had one in Scotland this month, and a fatal one in Wales some time in the last year...?

It isn't every day, but it does keep happening, at ramming speed, and casualties are pretty much anyone on the upper deck except for particularly short children.

Yes, yes, buses and bridges both have signs on them all saying how high and how low they are. Perhaps that stops a lot of these accidents, but not all of them.

Re: Bezel

...oh, and using zip files - or something similar - so that if serial file transfer across the desk glitched, the zip file checksum error showed there was a problem.

Re: With great power comes great incompatibility

The server in one secondary school was losing power in the early evening. I think we noticed because the log of backups was checked and we didn't have theirs. There was a UPS connected, enough for a short run and graceful shutdown, and the UPS log showed that indeed a loss of external power occurred. Did you think it was going to BE the UPS? It happens.

Inquiries were made in the school, and as far as I remember, it turned out that the janitor had had a bright idea to save the bother of going around turning off lights at night, he just turned off the mains supply.

Normal service was resumed.

Being locked out of a room with stuff left switched on might inspire your night time staff to the same "solution".

Re: Obviously was not tested

The latest Flash version is 32.0.0.414, released about a week ago.

Really.

Surely you're checking for updates? :-)

Re: All perfectly integrated

Dickinsonian - Emily?

Or Dickensian - Charles?

Or perhaps a sinister and strange substitution for Kafkafkafkaesque?

Re: By the way:

Ah well. I can grow more skin.

The bottle says Garnier, PureActive, Hydro-Alcoholic, presumably legitimate enough, I think it is from Tesco.

I do not recommend this product.

Re: Remember when there was talk of Windows in cars?

Possible spoiler for James Bond doing most of that at the start of "For Your Eyes Only" last night or thereabouts, did you have that in mind?

Re: List of reasons avoid this thing entirely for the rest of your life gets longer and longer

Did anyone threaten to inject a laser beam in any of your intimate spaces?

Re: re: dictionary and AD

If you're talking about password strength rules, their only effect on me is that after I carefully and securely make up an utterly random letter password, the rule rejects it.

The other day I hit a system which rejects a password that uses any letter twice in a row. So mrmxy zpplx isn't random enough for that. (And because it's an arch enemy of Superman in comics, nearly, but never mind that.)

Also my employer recently subscribed me to an online security tutorial. So I made up a password for that but no! My password is too long!

Re: Wibbly

Under the desk - I think that groping around below waist level* could lead quickly to rather a long chat with Human Resources.

* To switch the fan off obviously - but it may be not obvious how to do that. There's probably a switch somewhere but where - and by now there's a micro-heater that just squats in a power outlet and glares at you.

For at least twenty years, there's been talk on-off about putting a fuel cell into a, um, cell phone. Then just add fuel. But most of the market is happy with "just add electricity". And yet the opposite with cars... Anyway, you aren't wishing for a fuel cell, you want to forget Steve Jobs and own a personal computer designed by Charles Babbage. The inventor of "not shipping on schedule".

But his machines were generally operated by a crank.

Well, so were Steve Jobs's.

Re: Harry Potter, but with science, instead of magic!

Yes. Perhaps that was meant to be "he was breeding lizards". But who knows. Lungs are vulnerable to nasty diseases and infiltrations, a trained squad of cleaners to go in there and tidy up might be useful.

I think I heard about another book or series about a clever female junior scientist or possibly it was this one, but it was at least a little while ago. I listen to BBC including their World Service, national channel Radio 4, and archive of older programmes on Radio 4 Extra, so something that came past me more than once could be in any of those. But it seems not to be Dawn French or Lucy Hawking or any of this year's guests on "The Life Scientific". For instance, Stephen and Lucy Hawking wrote some children's adventures, but a boy named George seems to get all the title billing.

There are others; Dora the Explorer of course, "Dino Dan" on television was evolved into "Dino Dana", and Marvel Comics has: "Moon Girl" and her T-Rex dinosaur with which she swaps minds INCONVENIENTLY, Nadia Van Dyne and her "Genius In action Research Labs" team who are older, Ironheart the teenage female Iron Man, Valeria Richards of the Fantastic Four, and Squirrel Girl (who mainly knows about computers and squirrels) - though these were mostly paused after a while and then there was COVID-19 and no comics. But I'm sure they'll be all right.

Re: Nope

I thought Windows XP SP2 was adequate, but maybe I have low standards or am forgetting how to count.

Re: mega European masts

I meant I tried: paltry float.

So I had to try: paltry gloat.

Also: paltry goat.

But I am still at a loss.

Re: Angels are real

Guardian angels, do they exist? Do pious people seem to be protected? It is a little tricky because if everybody has one from conception then how do you test that. However, according to some (see Wikipedia), Muslims have two each. So you could design an experiment, e.g. a volunteer walks down a roadway on which is placed a banana skin, but that is next to a bush that I am hiding behind with a comedy-type custard pie. If the volunteer has only one guardian angel, then they will be steered past the banana skin but while the guardian angel is doing that, I will get the volunteer when I jump out with the custard pie. If they have two guardian angels then the joke is on me.

Re: Editing

Maybe make any forum post with the word "correction" be not published and sent only to Regquarters?

I would do that.

A pile of university student coursework? Who would want it?

You might be able to create your own shortcuts to some Administrative Tools or to the folder, if you want to be able to launch them from somewhere else on your system.

Re: 10-K warnings vs. contingency plans

It's stated that Apple specifically did, in fact, insure against a pandemic. Literally, I'm assuming.

Which I mention because many UK businesses with "business interruption" insurance were told that they did, in fact, not insure against a pandemic. But they thought they did.

Apparently they tend to have one contract clause that says "You're insured against a disease outbreak" and another clause some way off that says "not if it's a really big one".

This is it going to court:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53465972

Re: Backup phone

I have an O2 PAYG SIM that doesn't expire AFAICR. It's not the one you get in shops, I think I ordered it online in 2018.