Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Re: As a young broadcast engineer, unschooled in IT at the time

When you have a president declaring war on Covfefe having an intern in charge of the teleprompter is probably an improvement.

Re: As a young broadcast engineer, unschooled in IT at the time

>"There is no place or time for useless legalese/nanny crap, a mission-critical-level user is supposed to know what he's doing, else he shouldn't be there."

Except for the self-destruct on the Nostromo !

Re: Personal heaters

>, all computers pretty much put all of the power they consume out as heat

Strictly speaking only if they destroy information - it's theoretically possible to make computing circuits that consume no energy if the calculations are reversible

Re: Personal heaters

We had straws to suck on them.

....straws? .... luxury !

Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""

But there never was a Vietnam war, it's just a story put out by Hollywood.

If there was a war the USA would have won and Vietnam would play baseball and make cars.

Do you see any Vietnamese cars in the USA? No, therefore they couldn't have been a war there.

Re: PAT

Or it's an instruction

Re: Toaster Smoke Alarm

I was always fascinated by conveyor toasters as a kid and I still want one for home.

I'm just off to model how long it would need to be at 13A to produce toast in a reasonable time

Re: Sshh!

We discovered that in our nice new extension.

However we did have something entirely superfluous to requirements in a 1990s high energy physics lab = a women's toilet - so that became the cleaners cupboard.

Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""

There's a story from Afghanistan of a unit digging a latrine and finding a buried connex full of weapons.

Thinking it was some special forces secret weapons cache they called an officer who was confused.

He called a sergeant who said he would deal with it. He ordered another group to bury it somewhere else.

What he suspected had happened was a container of weapons were delivered which hadn't been ordered and didn't have paperwork for - so rather than try and sort it out, a previous sergeant had simply buried the mistake and he was continuing the good work.

I'm now suspecting that archaeological finds are actually a bunch of stuff that the Roman Empire sent by mistake and an old hand centurion buried rather than try and sort out the stylus work.

Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""

Not sure they are that fussy, so long as they aren't related to the O'Bama's

>Admit to having a 1200W fan heater (metal case)

So long as it runs VMS

Warmed up though didn't it ?

>fuck Peloton

A product area I suspect they are working on

Re: Personal heaters

Our fancy new office AC is controlled by a network of artificially intelligent Nest thermostats who apparently hate all humans. As a result it is at a temperature only polar bears and 'Canadian Northern indigenous peoples' would find comfortable.

Working with one of our [she/her] pronoun-ed engineeresses I felt a blast of hot air.

Concerned we were working her, or at least her CPU, too hard I was going to check the computer when she confessed to the under-desk heater.

Seemed like a reasonable engineering solution, although wearing more than a t-shirt which stops above her naval piercing might also help. Not sure I can tell a [she/her] junior report to put on a cardie without sounding like my grandmother and/or being made to go on a course.

Re: Another government IT fuck-up in the making

Ah, defeat the Japanese by tricking them into taking over a British nationalised industry !

A cunning plan worthy of a French car maker.

Re: Another government IT fuck-up in the making

In my dealings with Japanese electronics companies, lack of organisation and failure to deliver have never been major problems.

Months of meetings about meetings, who will be present, who will present, making sure everybody is called "san" = yes. Totally project fsckup = no.

How come the govt managed to find Fujitsu ?

Re: £1.7bn procurement for MOD recruitment

There are 150,000 people in the UK armed forces, £1,700,000,000 to recruit them seems like rather a lot.

Re: IR35

I suspect ruling that IR35 doesn't apply to the army could generate the savings.

I think independent contractors such as the White Company is in line with current thinking on Europe

Re: Oh those naughty Russians…

> I'm intrigued at the idea of GPS enabled air defences.

When your target is helpfully broadcasting its GPS position and airline call sign over ADS it makes it much easier.

> Ravens have 9 primary flight feathers,... crows only have eight

Not an easy question to bring up on first acquaintance with one

Re: It's happened before

But Australian emus !

Re: Things happen in Canberra?

Isn't it a city they built to safely contain politicians away from normal people ?

We have Ottowa which is similarly boring

>There's your problem right there.

These millennials with their sensitive filenames.

Filenames should begin with DISK$USERS: like G$D intended

The problem is they probably do have lots of safeguards.

Such that it takes 17 levels of sign-off on 8 different security systems by 3 admirals, a field-marshall and 2 popes, to send an email to another dept, and this can only be done from a single Tempest shielded secure terminal in a locked room in a bunker under Rockall.

So as a result the entire system relies on people emailing spreadsheets to each other from private hotmail accounts.

The result of the enquiry will be to add another layer of locks to the door to the bunker ...

Re: Why does it happen so often ?

Wasn't this the plot of a Bond movie?

Moneypenny has to shoot Daniel Craig before he leaves a disk with list of all the agents on a train

This was the MoD, laws don't apply to people with nukes

Re: "cheaper self-driving cars getting the bare minimum"

No it's simply Intel's business model.

If you have a 3series BMW you need an I3, if you have a more powerful 5 series it has an I5 and a 7 series needs an I7. If you use your car for business it needs a Xeon