* Posts by Robert Carnegie

4532 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2009

Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: The cleaner did it.

The "news" article we are commenting on, already (or anyway now) has a link to "urban legend" i.e.

https://www.truthorfiction.com/intensivecare/

Also probably not true is the cleaner who spent all day cleaning an elevator car, since apparently they were under the impression it was a different one on each floor and so... but no.

Control is only an illusion, no matter what you shove on the Netware share

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: "Or heard the sphincter-loosening words: 'What's a backup?' "

Vegetarian version: he eats shoots and leaves

This comment is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: a melting mystery mystery

My interpretation:

"had been shaving"

with Mum's make up mirror

"the convex side"

I think you mean concave, hollow.

convex --> ( <-- concave

A portable dressing-table mirror is liable to have one side flat, showing things normal size, and one side concave, showing things enlarged.

On sunlight this acts like the Jodrell Bank dish and concentrates it in a small area nearby.

Google "concave building" and you will find, amongst other things, tales of large city centre edifices whose bendy glass front tends to set fire to properties across the street on a sunny day.

On the north side of Ingram Street in Glasgow, Scotland, next to Queen Street, there is one whose (suspected) destructive power is limited by one thing only: it's in Scotland. So it's never so sunny.

It is across from a lingerie shop, "Bold as Bras" or some such, so knickers on fire is quite possible.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Shonky-net

Not running on stairs, please. And it's government work so no hurry. ;-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Shonky-net

I wonder what they thought it was when it arrived?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Dwarfs or dwarves?

(1) Might Be.

After 16 years of hype, graphene finally delivers on its promise – with a cosmetic face mask

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

You could call it a polymer. It'll burn or oxidise, I would imagine.

It's just a flat sheet of carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice arrangement.

Carbon dioxide is oxidized carbon, and a gas. I suppose carbon monoxide is possible. A more dangerous gas to breathe. It should oxidise to give you carbon dioxide... maybe eventually?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: I wonder how long it'll be before ...

Well, there's Catholic mass...

I believe that because of Covid-19 virus, local churches are now stopping putting the body of Christ in worshippers' mouths as has been usually done, and handing it to you instead. Possibly with gloves.

I heard about an atheist in America who sneaked in once and by legerdemain took the body of Christ home with him. People were ever so cross about that. I think violence was threatened but I don't firmly recall.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: has not said quite how its cosmetic face masks will benefit from graphene

Coincidentally Graphene is a suburb of Venice

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Cell phones in prison

That's two ways you don't want to be surprised.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: That's Amazing!

Could be case sensitive hexadecimal :-)

As Australia is gripped by bog roll shortage, tabloid says: Here, fill your dunny with us

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Am I missing something ?

Yeah, install a second shower box just for rinsing of rump should be a cheaper design. A bit tricky to have some of the runoff not go in your socks, though.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Am I over-sharing ?

They say that invisible particles of crap land on your toothbrush just when you flush the pan in the usual way, if the bathroom sink is next to the throne. I think Snopes confirmed this but I'm not sure how to look it up. It still sounds scare-monger-ish and I'm not sure how having dishwasher components operating from under the seat is worse.

I used a public loo in Perth Scotland where the flush was on touch control and I accidentally touched it several times during my meditation. I was moistened, but I did not feel fully cleansed.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Am I missing something ?

Now I can't think about anything but hand sanitizer.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I was in an Argos shop the other day and saw their nice thick catalogue.

A shop is a place where old people can buy things to take home instead of being delivered or 3D printed.

A "catalogue" is like Amazon, but printed on paper. It is a "book" with "pages" showing things to buy, like web pages.

"Paper" is a display system made from poor innocent trees. It has a digital interface if you lick your finger and then use it to turn the pages.

"Licking" is a form of intimate greeting that we used before SARS bird flu swine flu coronavirus golgotha plague.

Surprise! Plans for a Brexit version of the EU's Galileo have been delayed

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Good

Apparently God-President Putin has just come out for the sanctity of marriage as a constitutional rule. President Trump therefore is going to hell. It remains to be determined when.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Good

I mean, if the US wants to charge the UK for use of GPS then presumably they can switch off the satellites while they pass over Great Britain and on again afterwards.

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

Re: But of course

Or you could dress for the job you want. Supposing that you do.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Oh so special's

Isn't it a basic design flaw of minimal-design Bic pens and similar... pocket clip is on the cap, so you put the pen in your pocket with the clip at the top... which means that the tube full of ink has one end open - at the bottom. Add body heat and there goes another shirt. Or trouser, but since I mostly wear basically black trousers, it only showed on my leg, when I undressed.

Bic four-colour biro has a clip along with the complicated apparatus at the top, and your ballpoint comes out the bottom. That just leaves the problem of not losing the beggar. I have mine on a plastic "phone cord" clip (with elastic band to the pen actually), so that if it falls out of my back pocket, it just hangs down and tickles my knees. My elastic band broke today, but I've got loads at home.

'Don't tell anyone but I have a secret.' There, that's my security sorted

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Not a freebie in sight

I haven't seen refills compatible with Bic four-colour pens for quite a long time. I think I remember a multi storey stationery shop in Glasgow (Scotland) was the last place: their special line was wedding invitations etc. and they probably stayed in business on that, until they didn't, permissive society and divorce I suppose. I am not sure how foor-colour pen user support fitted into that business model.

Then again... there's probably more different types of pen on sale now, so no room for utilitarian refills. Though WHS did have some different types of refill on my last visit. But there's felt pens, gel pens, erasable pens, fluorescent pens, fluorescent-only invisible pens, left-handed pens, fat-fingered pens, ten pens economy pack, laundry markers, CD markers, gold and silver pens, perfumed pens, unicorn pens, and still quite a lot of fountain pens which I think exist mainly to be gifted to children of other people that you don't much like (child or parent or both), as a cunningly subtle punishment. If you don't want to be subtle, give them laundry pens. The effect on clothes will be the same.

I'm old fashioned and am used to shopping physically, in person, which may be the problem. Though if you were rich enough, ordering stuff for delivery was always an option. In ancient Roman times... no, you'd have a slave to send, the market wouldn't deliver. But once you could write a message without a stone slab and chisel... all right, yes I know the Romans could send messages on their hand held tablets, this is getting a bit vague.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Not a freebie in sight

I recently spent quite a while browsing various places looking for a fine-tipped ballpoint. Admittedly not the best places... several supermarkets (ahem) and eventually a reasonably large WH Smith. Found what was commonly available 40 years ago, which still is (when you look in approximately the right place; Bic with a yellow barrel. Sold loose with, now, a neatly placed barcode sticker.

Most of the time, I use the "medium" four-colours-in-one job - phone-coiled and elastic-banded from my trouser belt loop, so that if it falls out of my back pocket, it just dangles anent my knees. The trick is finding occasions to use the red and green to even out the life span.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Equal opportunities

Nowadays a French politician may -be- the mistress! Not to mention that a politician could be (politically incorrect word) instead. Or they are (another politically incorrect word). Or indeed, all of the above. Qu'il y ait des images, sinon cela ne s'est pas produit. :-)

(Unforgivable abuse of the French language, I suppose, by means of Google Translate. I just assume that if it turns back into what I put in originally then it'll do.)

Talk about making a rod for your own back: Pot dealer's seized €54m Bitcoins up in smoke after keys thrown out with fishing gear

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Daft or smart?

And here's one: "Drowned Hopes" by Donald E. Westlake.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005UK7TYA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

"Long ago, Tom buried $700,000, and now he needs help digging it up. While he was inside, the government dammed a nearby river, creating a reservoir and putting fifty feet of water on top of his money."

One obvious and awful solution needs to be avoided!

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Daft or smart?

1965 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Job_%28film%29

Sees your housing estate, and raises you a police station, whose pleasant-sounding yard includes the tree that the loot was stashed in.

Similarly:

1999 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_%28film%29

Minus the tree and Sid James and plus murders, so not really a remake.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1 has a handy table of what doesn't work any more, but that is mainly because the radioactive power supply is deteriorating.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Beware survival bias

The current generation don't wear watches, the last that I heard. But I seldom meet one to ask.

I wear a cheap retro-design Casio with weekday and time displayed to seconds. I set it by hand from the radio-controlled wall clock at home. True to the original, the backlight is almost invisible, but my phone has a flash function.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Coat

Re: General issue with expensive watches nowadays

Arguably you only need to buy your own watch that will continue to function as long as your dad does.

(Or get an Apple one that reminds him to take old-person pills and senses wrist movement to confirm that he has done so. Then who wants Omega.)

Woody Allen (back when he was acceptable): "My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch."

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

"Resilient" in the sense that as parts break, you manage to make the rest go on working.

Also, Captain Janeway rationed use of the replicators, or the ship wouldn't have made it past the first season.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Beware survival bias

W H Smith sells cardboard biros now, which I dide't try out, but I think the insides are as they were before.

Microsoft uses its expertise in malware to help with fileless attack detection on Linux

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Didn't Microsoft SQL Server suffer one of these attacks about 20 years ago? Ah - 2003 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer

And if your system had current patching installed, you were OK.

MWC now stands for Mighty Wallet Crusher? Smaller firms counting the cost after mobile industry event scrapped

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I suppose GSMA can hope that this year's other big trade shows are clobbered by Covid-19 as well. And maybe next year... but this is probably the wrong way to look at it.

Just the place you'd want to spot a BSOD: While waiting in line for a roller coaster that lifts you up 124ft

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: It'll just make it more exciting...

Er… I'll hope he was pretending. But it might be the only way to do that maintenance, as the structure flexes?

It also sounds like it might go in a Scooby Doo episode, did he look familiar?

Huawei claims its Google Play replacement is in 'top 3' app stores after Trump turns off tap to the Chocolate Factory

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I took it that genuine Google Play is proprietary software of Google, so can only be used legally by licensing it, which you probably can't. Now, for bootlegging it - sure.

I remember seeing cheap "Android" tablets on sale quite a long time ago. At this time, it was strictly phones only, as far as Google was concerned, but still necessarily open source. My online research around purchasing found mainly people working a fiddle to put whatever Google Play was previously called at the time onto these things, or complaining bitterly that due to moving goalposts they now could not do that.

So I bought a thing called "Samsung Galaxy Tab", not the "current" one of that name but a now unacknowledged predecessor - an Android 2.2 tablet that was "legal" because it was, in fact, a phone.

Then IIRC there was Android 3 for pure tablets only, then Android 4 for anything. But as far as I remember, I got one update, to Android 2.3, and that didn't work well.

I think I accidentally left it somewhere in Glasgow probably in late 2018 and someone must have helped themselves to it, but since as far as I know its charging cable is unique as well, they didn't enjoy it for long. If someone sees this... I could still be interested in getting it back. I had it cunningly enclosed in a black book cover... with a neck cord: how it looked wasn't a worry to me.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

Robert Carnegie Silver badge
Joke

"I came across a Pugin for Word last year that would allow it to read AmiPro files. "

But everything comes out Gothic :-)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Lots of this type of stuff on YouTube

"Actually it was fossil data."

Well, by definition. ;-)

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: 2012

I bid "2011 and counting". https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2016/05/23/five-years-later-harold-campings-followers-are-still-predicting-the-end-of-the-world/

"The Bible Guarantees It" (sic)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: What an incredibly stupid way to die.

Apparently the landing parachute came out on the way up instead of the way down. I'm prepared to call that stupid.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I'm fairly confident that just about all adults at this end of the twenty-first century who are not actually mentally ill or mentally handicapped or living undiscovered deep in the Amazon jungle, or on notorious North Sentinel Island, do not really believe that the world is flat. Some just have fun pretending to believe that it is, even to the point of really upsetting people who want to straighten them out... that may be the wrong expression.

However, there was a nutty church cult in the U.S. in the 19th century who may have been sincere (although getting to America from the sort of place that they came from implicitly requires accepting that you are traversing the surface of a globe), and I think I read a BBC News web site report which claimed that the founder of the violent "Islamist" sect "Boko Haram", who is no longer with us, believed that the world isn't a globe on the specific grounds that modern Christians accept that it is. So do a lot of Muslims but presumably that just went to show. I also am not counting on the allegation as, er, gospel.

Happily, nowadays you only have to watch ’"The Clangers" to have a visual although rather fanciful demonstration of life on a globe, quite a small one in their case. The children run laps of it for fun. And they don't have television although they are on it.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I waver on whether people who produce anti-factual gibberish on the internet should be simply made to stop, or should be allowed to run free on arbitrary and settled topics, so that voters are exposed to public nonsense and know what it looks or sounds like before the television debates happen.

In this case, "possible routes by which the Covid-19 virus will arrive in your neighbourhood" which depend on the actual shape of the globe, although this has been found to be mainly a chart of public passenger aeroplane routes, anyway. (And this does NOT mean "chemtrails". Do not... oh, never mind, I can't stop you. At least it'll counter-act the "Chinese biological weapon" meme.)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

I'm aware of this venue, and I think the word "fantastic" is correctly used. It has several distinct meanings.

The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Well, two switches maybe would have still filled half a rack?

As a precaution of bailiffs - probably are prepared for that one and don't take any notice of asset tags?

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Google Street View has number blurring technology, use that...

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

There are new roads built all the time, though.

My sister and her bloke have old sat nav that doesn't know about some road changes around me - in we're in their car it shows us amusingly driving off the road and cross country for a bit.

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: I've used up 80 rolls of tape now....can you help

I wondered about this scenario - are human-only driven cars in your locality also driving at 80 mph where you have changed the road signs to tell them that they can? I bet that a significant number would. I think I can resist the urge to try your experiment...

And incidentally… do UK (Scottish) police car drivers report things like traffic lights out or seriously wonky road signs - the other night I decided to skip reporting a pretty busy junction with dead traffic lights since I saw a police car go through, but I could be supposing wrong. I could drop in and ask. They didn't hop out to take control of the junction with hand signals, as far as I could see, which would be another response.

Don't break your swanky new Motorola Razr, you probably won't be able to get it fixed

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: £100 a month on Contract?

For that money, surely you just get given a new one if you need it?

A dirty dozen of Bluetooth bugs threaten to reboot, freeze, or hack your trendy gizmos from close range

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: I'm looking forward to the SIGRIDTOOTH...

Some Viking names or nick-names are pretty striking. "Wood-Nose" is one to ask about, but the owner may be sensitive about their appearance. Looking online, it probably does not refer to a wooden spectacles-stand of novel and humorous design (some have a moustache), which looks like what you give to the man or woman who has everything, including glasses.

Another week, another bunch of Windows 10 machines punched by a patch

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: plus quoted title = "The title is too long". I hadn't seen that happen before.

Does it stop doing it if you tell it that the Internet connection is metered - charged by use? Mine basically is, and I told Windows that, and I don't seem to have these problems.

Who needs the A-Team or MacGyver when there's a techie with an SCSI cable?

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: Upsidedown Folio

I would upvote twice if (1) I could and (2) the story had ended with the server turned over and promptly not booting until turned upside down again. I know that isn't what happened, but... wasn't that your backout plan?

By the way, am I misreading the story that it was YOUR decision that the upside-down server should be not upside down any more? Your colleague wanted to repair it... wanted YOU to repair it... while lying on your back??

(Did they have one of those body-sized skate board things?)

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: HOWTO Move Your Server

Some "co workers" need to be led by the hand. Some really should not.

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

Robert Carnegie Silver badge

Re: The devils foam

There's a relevant Doctor Who story from the 1970s. "The Green Death". Being on colour television maybe went to their heads. Incidentally, an office computer also features largely.