Posts by Stoneshop

Re: Constantly, in a fashion.

Of course you always find something in the last place you look.

After you've found it there's no point in continuing looking.

Well

The ideal moment to teach said sprog some choice local invective

Re: Happy ending

It's just like time sheets.

There's never a line item for stating the time needed to enter the time sheet data.

"You're in a maze of twisty little reporting codes, all alike."

Slightly different

Important VAX is down due to a power supply gone phut. I've already identified the bastard and called Logistics to send a new one; unfortunately it's halfway across the country and needs some paperwork finished before it can be sent. It basically had to be imported into the country from a warehouse holding stock for most of Western Europe, but that's a standard process. ETA is 3 hours from now.

IT manager comes in and demands to know why Important VAX is down, and why is it taking so long when he's paying lots of money for its service contract. I reply that I'm unable to conjure power supplies, or any other type of spare part, out of thin air and that a replacement is being sent.

"We run the repair facilities for these devices, why don't you take the power supply to the guys across the road and have it fixed?"

Argh.

The repair facilities itself are basically "international area" and anything going out would be subjected to the same customs process as the part being sent is, and that one is already partway into that administrative mill. The borked PSU would ALSO have to be exported first to be allowed to enter the repair facilities, and they don't have that paperwork stuff at the reception desk. Nor at the loading dock where those parts normally come in, as that side of the process is handled by the country Logistics department. So it's definitely not going to be any faster, if it even would be possible at all.

"Excuse me, my pager shows "call the office". Right, that was Logistics who wanted to inform me that the new PSU has gone through, will be picked up by a courier shortly, and should be here in about two hours".

Re: "His palm and fingerprints were analyzed from this picture"

You don't have the original pic to work from.

(Remember Radio Shack, and when they actually sold components?)

You must be close to retirement.

Somewhere around 1980 they tried running a couple of shops in the Netherlands. The one in the city I lived in was in a prime location in a major shopping area, right across from the town hall. There were at least three well-stocked electronic parts shops less than 10 minutes cycling away, with agreeable parts prices instead of ones that can only be explained by RS shipping each part individually, by first class airmail, from the factory to HQ, where they would be manually packed in those Archer blister packs, then sent on, again individually by 1st class airmail, to some regional distribution centre and from there by luxury limousine to the shop. Which would then slap the price sticker on, with the decimal separator left off.

Those shops also had a Pimply-Faced Shop Assistant to customer ratio of 3 or 4 to 1 for the moments there actually WAS a customer inside. Knowing nothing (of course) and trying to get your name and address for whatever inane marketing stuff HQ could think up.

They didn't do well, and shut within a year.

Stock remains ended up at one of the other shops, now priced in line with the rest of that shop's inventory, but it still didn't sell; ten years on it was something of a sediment in their bargain bin.

Re: At this point I wonder exactly which provider makes sense

I was using Nokia bar phones (as my work phone) right until two weeks ago; everyone else has been using smartphones since they were offered as the corporate phone (including WinPhones at some point). I just kept using what I already had. Or found.

However, couple of weeks back I got a mail asking if I was perhaps using a 2G SIM? Nope, it's the standard company-issued SIM, in a 2G phone. "Oh, but $provider is going to drop 2G in a couple of months, so you'll have to get something that does 4G". "Sorry, I'm not going to walk around with a portable data collector powered by Google. Or Apple, for that matter."

So now I'm looking into stripping KaiOS down to just calls and SMS, no farcebook, google arsesistant and the like,

5mm is guaranteed to be a mistake.

Quite.

Elsewhere someone was looking for the specs for a transformer to use a 110V suitcase amp+speaker (for an electric guitar) on 230V. He read the fuse value as 22A, so he was unpleasantly surprised at the size and cost of the 3kW transformer that would require.

Turned out the lettering on the chassis was rather worn, and the fuse was actually .22A.

22A would feed a fair-sized PA stack, not just a single suitcase amp/speaker.

Re: At TeeCee, re: rocks.

They have determined that my doodles violate too many of the cosmic laws WRT "Rule 34" as it pertains to "porn involving squiggly things".

And I see Shadow Systems being 'invited' by The Society to visit a psychiatrist, and being shown a series of Rorschach blots.

#1. ShadSys: "Nothing there."

#2. ShadSys: "Nothing there."

#3. ShadSys: "Nothing there."

...

#n. ShadSys: "Nothing there."

Shadow Systems is dismissed, and the shrink starts doubting those blots. He shows them to the next patient.

#1. NextPt: "Two people having sex."

#2. NextPt: "Two people having sex."

#3. NextPt: "Two people having sex."

...

#n. NextPt: "Two people having sex."

Shrink: "Is 'Two people having sex' really what you see in all those blots?"

NextPatient: "Yes. If you wanted me to see something else you should have drawn that."

Re: Beat me to it.

You will not get that from a straight copy and paste (which I presume is what El Reg did). You need to play with GT a bit : for example try translating "interstellar" into Chinese and it gives "interplanetary" as alternative usage and vice versa.

Deepl turns the first paragraph into "On May 15, China's first Mars exploration mission, the Tianwen-1 rover landed in the southern pre-selected landing zone of the Martian Utopian Plain, leaving China's imprint on Mars for the first time and taking an important step in China's interplanetary exploration journey. Later, the Zhu Rong Mars rover will carry out global imaging of the landing site, self-test driving away from the landing platform and carry out roving probes in turn." on the first try.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

GOOD landings on Mars, however....

So far, no-one has walked away from them.

Re: Nothing there...

Still more than in your lack of brain.

And significant costs only become involved when someone is accused of violating the contract.

Well, there are the copyright chaser lawyers, who are not above creating business through unfounded accusations, extremely minor infractions and cases that are undisputably fair use.

Re: youtube-dl

If it's "in the cloud", it'll probably not be there next week.

With the more amusing and/or impressive cases being presented here on El Reg.

Re: Not quite as bad

Several. Enough to build a most elaborate Heath Robinson Funeral Pyre Incendiary Trigger Contraption imaginable.

Re: Technology repeating

Nothing new under the sun.

Tell that to the apparently sentient greenish stuff of what used to be coffee under the Ultra10, now hissing menacingly at the cleaning rag.

Re: Music industry all over again

converting other formats became tiresome.

find ~/Music -type f -exec ffmpeg -i {} TheBestOfQueen/{}.mp3 \;

plus some appropriate options to ffmpeg.

Re: Music industry all over again

Bugger the music industry with a splintery broomstick lovingly anointed with something carrying at least a 100k Scoville rating. If I have bought a record on Carrier X, I'm free to copy it to Carrier Y to enjoy elsewhere, and I have no qualms about doing so myself. Which has me paying a Copy Tax on blank media anyway.

The music industry would have a little more of my sympathy if the actual creators were seeing a larger piece of that pie.

Re: Not uncommon

To put it in context the Falcon 9 second stage is 3.66m diameter, 12.5km long

That would be one way to get its payload reach planned altitude, but I have my doubts that it's an effective one.