But we're experiencing unusual demand.
Like a demand for actual help.
Posts by Stoneshop
5951 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009
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Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?
The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility
Thursday 17th March 2022 18:38 GMT
Re: No line test
Also, my VDSL modem tells me the length of wiring it sees, and whether there's something, which may or may not be a working DSLAM, at the other end.
If the connection is down and the modem doesn't offer any info beyond that, I might whip out a multimeter (which any discerning self-repair person should have) and poke the connector contacts. If inconclusive, an oscilloscope will be tried next.
Thursday 17th March 2022 18:22 GMT
Re: Lightning Protection
I'll stick my neck out and say I assume an aerial is only grounded when plugged in.
Hardly ever. The aerial input tends to have capacitive coupling between the actual socket and the innards, mainly to keep voltages induced in the antenna lead from mains cabling, or static, from reaching the electronics. TV sets that employed more tubes than just the CRT nearly always needed galvanic separation between chassis and antenna socket as the chassis could be 'hot'.
Also, with your antenna mast bolted to the chimney or bracketed to a high point on a wall it's already an attractor for lightning, having the lead plugged into your TV won't make a whole lot of difference there. It's mainly to try and keep the TV from being part of the lightning's path and getting its circuits grilled.
Chip world's major suppliers of neon gas shut down by Ukraine invasion – report
Sunday 13th March 2022 21:01 GMT
Re: Why do chips need neon?
And also why politicians might be a tad optimistic saying we should just build more fab plants given each tool would need 1MW+ electricity. Guessing that's a reason why fab plants get built where energy costs are low.
Just cut off the local cryptobro's around where you plan to put a new chip fab, and if they complain too loudly get them a hometrainer to generate their own leccy.
Dependent on the cutting off they may not be able to operate it, but that'd be just tough luck.
Mary Coombs, first woman commercial programmer, dies at 93
Sunday 13th March 2022 18:11 GMT
Re: First time I heard of her -- thanks!
The movie "Hidden Figures" shows a fair (not perfect of course, it's still a Hollywood product) account of the role of the 'calculators', and how they managed to adjust to the introduction of computers.
John Glenn requested that one of them, Katherine Johnson, go over the calculations for his flight before he was confident enough to plonk his butt on top of some 100 tons of kerosene and LOX and have it fling him into earth orbit with sufficient chance to get back down. In one piece.
Enterprise IT finds itself in a war zone – with no script
Thursday 10th March 2022 06:42 GMT
Re: Internet != Web
Even during the cold war, with no generic networks between both sides of the Iron Curtain, and strict export controls on Western tech, including info and software, the USSR managed to build copies of a fair part of Digital's PDP series, and later a couple of their VAXes. Quite likely other manufacturers' gear as well
And do you really think a rogue state cares one whit about terms of service and software licenses? They don't care about human rights violations, why would they respect usage clauses?
Chinese rocket junk may have just smashed into Moon
Sunday 6th March 2022 12:14 GMT
Missing the moon
Impressive achievement if you're aiming for it; it's quite big, really. Nearly 456 Wales, 4 DRCs during full moon, but maybe they fired those Rangers at it while it was half-moon or even less.
They could also have put a cracker cladding on the front as that would certainly be attracted by the moon's cheese, but apparently NASA chose to approach the targeting problem with technology instead of with common sense.
Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage
Co-inventor of Ethernet David Boggs dies aged 71
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 21:25 GMT
Re: 50 ohm coax
Digging through my pile of junk copious collection of curiosa recently I found two 10b2<->TP converters. Curiously, they claim to do 10 and 100 Mbit on the TP side, possibly for upstream compatibility raisins but otherwise not that useful.
On and off I've been working on fitting a WiFi transceiver inside a H4005 (AUI to 10b5 converter), with a short length of 10b5 coax acting as the transceiver's antenna. In the end it should work like hanging your VAX or whatever off a thickwire backbone as well as look like it except for the short and otherwise unconnected length of thickwire the H4005 would be clamped on to.
Maxar Technologies: The eye in the sky tracking invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 18:13 GMT
They also don't know that anybody has been killed; let alone a death toll of six thousand on their side, and rising fast. The really, really scary thing? That actually appears to extend to good parts of the Russian army.
Russian conscripts captured by the Ukrainians have been prompted (asked? forced?) to call their family back home to tell them of their predicament. Which has been received with surprise, anger and grief, with people not even knowing there was an invasion going on, and obviously not the reason for it either.
Even those soldiers themselves often didn't know where they were exactly, or why..
BitConnect boss accused of $2.4bn crypto-Ponzi fraud has disappeared
Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!
Tuesday 1st March 2022 10:33 GMT
Re: Partitioning
Granted, but this isn't really a solution to that problem. Failing to back up is a problem in lots of cases, and reinstalling the OS is the simplest of them--the data's still there and you can back it up just for that case even if your routine backup option is lacking.
OK, now tell a newbie via instructions on a forum, who's just hosed their OS, /home (on that same partition) may or may not still be intact and likely not backed up recently, if at all:
0 - boot off live/install stick
1 - make a backup of what's still there to some external disk or another USB stick. Verify it's readable and has the stuff they say should be on it.
2 - reinstall from said ISO
3 - restore backup. Verify it all ended up where it should have gone.
Compare with:
0 - boot off live/install stick
1 - try to get newbie to unhose install.
2 - when failing revert to the steps above.
or:
0 - boot off live/install stick
1 - verify /home is there and unhosed (in some cases it is, but then you're probably in hardware failure territory anyway, and that at least is a different situation)
2 - let user copy it elsewhere just in case
3 - reinstall
I've seen enough of this shit, even in recent years with user-friendly installers and live ISOs, that I fail to see the advantage of putting OS and /home on a single partition.
Sunday 27th February 2022 09:25 GMT
Re: Partitioning
a user who already backs up their data
And I am Florence Nightingale. If they do, it's on to an USB stick at best. Which will get overwritten with the ISO to reinstall their system.
This assumes that you'll be reinstalling a lot, which they probably won't
I've been using a separate /home since starting using Linux, now about 25 years ago. Having to reinstall because of any reason between 'something irreversably broke' and 'moving to another distro' just came with the territory. And even with the disk sizes back then you just put /home, /var and /usr on separate partitions, even if that would keep you from using the free space in one to fix a shortage in another.
Nowadays, disk is cheap, effort is not. Over the last ten years at least I haven't had to reinstall a borked OS, although I did a few reinstalls for other reasons. And even with backups already made, not having to touch /home saves time and effort. Experimental systems with small disks may be a different matter, but I have sufficient spare disks around that were replaced by SSDs that I could fit 320G or more in any laptop with a smaller disk, and there's even a surplus 600G SSD for that.
My gf started using Linux some seven years ago, and wanted to do so by trying out a few user-friendly distros. That's a clear reason for having a separate /home, and even after settling on one the benefits have outweighed the downside. Also, none of them were ones I was using, so I told her that fixing things would be 90% up to her. She now supports newbies moving to Mint, and if there's one class of users that are prone to blowing up their Linux installs it's the ones starting fresh today. "I'm not using Python, so I deinstalled it". Bravo, you have also removed your software manager. "Do you have /home on a separate partition? Then just reinstall, and tell the installer there's a /home already that shouldn't be formatted."
Sunday 27th February 2022 00:13 GMT
Re: Have you tried opening those files in
This is my fscking work laptop. If I had any say in that I'd be using Linux as all the systems we're adminning are either Linux or VMS systems, and on that end there's no need to deal with Windows. At all.
But we get a one size fits no-one laptop, that the Word/Excel/Powerpoint brigade of penpushers can use too, and as I already mentioned, it's out of the question that anyone would be able to install anything but the blessed (and authorised) tools on their lappie. And since we already have Office365 or something, with all the bells, whistles, gongs, dancing clowns and hidden trap doors, LibreOffice is Not An Option.
Saturday 26th February 2022 15:02 GMT
Re: Concepts are hard to understand
F5 on the keyboard brings them all back in <1 second
Not even when I was working at the office. At best several seconds, and up to multiple minutes. At home I've nearly always needed rebooting to get Direct Access to get its shit together, which even with a fast-enough network and a laptop with an NVMe drive takes several minutes, and occasionally two or three iterations. One day I had to work via a 4G MiFi, and reboots were 'Go make a cup of coffee again, the thermos is empty'.
Saturday 26th February 2022 14:49 GMT
Partitioning
On the self-contained system that uses one internal disk with one OS on it, I have kept /home on the same filesystem so I can use the available space for whatever kind of data I want.
On every laptop I've used I always had /home on a separate partition, and just NEVER have I run out of space on / or /usr due to stuff happening there. Occasionally I get a bit low on /home, but with 150GB of music (available on the server too, to copy back when at home again) I have a bit of leeway in the disk space department. And large USB sticks are cheap.
One server's /var/spool ran out of inodes once. That required a fair bit of stashing files elsewhere, then reformatting to xfs.
Saturday 26th February 2022 14:33 GMT
My only invorvement with Windows
is through my company laptop, and THEY set up what goes where, what backup tool and regime are used and more such trivia, so saying "you should just use $this, $that or $theother program, and change settings $foo, $bar and $baz" just don't apply since that kind of frivolity is VERBOTEN.
Saturday 26th February 2022 14:28 GMT
Re: Concepts are hard to understand
Why printing is considered logically equivalent to editing is beyond me.
For DNS changes we get sent Excel files with the appropriate data (and some more like port and patch panel numbers, for other departments to use). You CAN NOT COPY from Excel unless you enable edit mode. I am NOT going to change the data in that file. I explicitly do NOT want to do so, on purpose or accidentally. For us, the data is READ-ONLY, so why the bloody fsck is Microsoft forcing me to enable changing it? I just want to copy-paste the address and FQDN from that sheet to the DNS admin tool.
(for a whole bunch of addresses in one go we have a different procedure, but this is for a single addition or change)
A tale of two dishwashers: Buy one, buy it again, and again
Friday 25th February 2022 12:52 GMT
Re: Marvel?
Sure.
One can marvel at the amount of effort that was said to have gone into these AI's, the cost of implementing it, putting in the hardware to run it on, etcetera, while the actual output is no better than a ZX81 with a wonky RAM expansion running
10 PRINT "Whoever reads this is an idiot"
20 GOTO 10
Friday 25th February 2022 12:43 GMT
Re: Kudos!
O M Effing G. Can you imagine a TV series - let's call it Fawlty Advertising - with Mr Cleese as the embattled and volcanic CEO, Manuel as Creative Director and Sibyl as his PA.
You have clearly not seen his instructional videos on various subjects sch as customer service and marketing.
BOFH: All hail the job cuts consultant
Saturday 26th February 2022 18:05 GMT
Re: Management Consultants
Their two main weapons are talking to the staff while giving the impression of listening to them, telling upper management to reduce head count and a fanatical devotion to McKinsey.
Among their main weapons are such things as, um, sorry, I'll come in again.
That three-piece purple robe, thanks.
FAA now says 5G airports may interfere with Boeing 737s
Comparing the descendants of Mandrake and Mandriva Linux
Food for thought on the return to the office
Friday 18th February 2022 21:09 GMT
Re: Douglas Adams
Going in to the office for just a bloody laptop? OK, if you're starting a new job, but that doesn't really apply to me. But still.
Three months back an email landed in my inbox, declaring that my laptop's time was up and that I should come into the office[0] and swap it for a new one. Which, according to that missive, would take fifteen minutes[1].
"So, for a matter that would take 15 minutes you requite me to expose myself for at least three hours to a seriously elevated risk of COVID contagion?. Colleagues have gotten their replacement laptops sent out; I expect my laptop's replacement to be treated no different."
This went unanswered for three months, then, without any explanation for the delay, I got asked for my address[2] to send the laptop to. Also, what cable would I need for an external monitor? "Two. DV]" "No Displayport or HDMI?" "No, it uses one of four inputs to a dual-screen DVI KVM switch and I'm not going to replace that plus the cards in the other three systems out of MY pocket (although you're free to supply me one, plus the three cards and the required cables). And it all runs fine at QHD, so I see no reason to start replacing anything, ". "Oh, Um. OK, I'll send an USB-C to DVI and a HDMI-DVI along"
Laptop arrives, with two pages of instructions that start with "Connect the laptop to your wireless". Looking the thing over it indeed has no Ethernet socket. Call the fellow who sent me those mails and query the absence of a hardware network connection. Get a load of waffle about wireless security and encryption and whatnot, where the actual matter is that wireless at my desk at home would be outperformed by a 56k modem due to the desk's position vis-a-vis the access point, and the materials separating them. Which, so far, hadn't mattered as everything in that room uses wired Ethernet. Grudgingly I get sent an USB-C Ethernet dongle.
Just waiting for a day with no urgent matters on the roster that would require me to be online to the office, to get this new one going.
[0] Hadn't been there since one and a half year at least. Also, not my office anyway, but close by.
[1] Harhar. That would be just the swapping and the basic setup getting Outlook, Teams and OneDrive going. Average total time in our department getting all the tools set up somewhat satisfactorily: a full working day.
[2] Apparently some external party, as otherwise my address would just plop out of a HR query.
RAID expansion comes to OpenZFS at last
Saturday 12th February 2022 08:15 GMT
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses OpenZFS on Linux to store their unfathomably large data sets. If Oracle had the ability to sue, they would have done that years ago (knowing how litigious they are).
Given the areas of research that LLNL dabbles in, it might just be a tad unwise to sue exactly them.
BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store
Friday 11th February 2022 16:33 GMT
Re: Electronics shop
Well, the two computer shops I regularly buy from do have an actual non-intarwebz, geo-locatable presence, but given their distance from my home it's just not very appealing to go there in person. Same with electronics parts shops, even when all the parts I need are indeed in stock in their physical store (which almost certainly won't ever be the case). Household white goods and consumer electronics? Those are still around, but how often are you buying that kind of stuff?
NASA taps Lockheed Martin to build Mars parcel pickup rocket
Tuesday 8th February 2022 19:08 GMT
Re: Are they actually going to open them on Earth ?
I would send them to the ISS to be opened first.
a) ISS is slated for decommissioning around that time, so any schedule slip in the SRL, MAV or ERO will nix that option.
b) ISS doesn't have the required gear onboard to do what you propose. Especially without human intervention.
c) Research so far shows Mars appears to be pretty well dead, biologically speaking.
UK science stuck in 'holding pattern' on EU funding by Brexit, says minister
No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish
Saturday 5th February 2022 14:05 GMT
Re: Simples...
AFAICR* they both definitely asked for confirmation if you wanted to format a disk not being A: or B:, but just the once, not Yes - No - Yes. Some versions asked for confirmation on any disk, but you could add a /Y on the command line to skip that.
* And that memory is fairly fresh, some 18 months ago I've dealt with an IBM PS/2 P70 portable that had OS/2 installed, and another system for which we needed to write a 5.25" DOS floppy. On a real DOS system.
Saturday 5th February 2022 13:50 GMT
Re: Simples...
That may have been a Dell..
HP (Compaq? Digital? not sure when the design was started) EVA. Fiber channel disks, as well as FC host links. Nearly all of them replaced with 3Par half a decade back, a few still in use despite their age and the scarcity of replacement parts. 3Par now being replaced with NetApps, as the last VMS systems should have been out the door by the end of last year and storage wouldn't have to support that any more. But of course that schedule has slipped; it's now expected to be curtains June/July.
I've rarely had trouble with SCSI, but apparently I've sacrificed the right amount of goats the right way at the right moment. Even the clusters with shared storage over SCSI) (3 hosts, 2 HSZ storage controllers and a sort of multiway socket in the middle) behaved quite acceptably during the time I had to deal with those.
The rites don't proscribe what you should do afterwards, making satay and barbecueing them evidently has no negative consequences.
Friday 4th February 2022 19:31 GMT
Re: Simples...
A set of SAN management tools we had to use required typing 'YES' in full twice for any action that could, or would, lead to data loss. If I had to design those dialogs I'd phrase them so that you would have to answer 'YES' and 'NO', but as it was it wasn't too bad. That stuff is now handled by a different group, so I don't know how the current crop of storage products they're using acts in that respect.
For dealing with dialog-dismissing dimwits I have often wished for an error message window that covers the entire screen, can't be minimized, displays a checksum so that you can verify the message being reported verbatim, and the window requiring an unlock code generated from a random string displayed as part of the error code.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
