Re: Scrap Meccano?
That's what they look like straight off the assembly line. The new owner will get it all painted over.
Posts by phuzz
6734 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2010
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End of an era as the last 747 rolls off the production line
Friday 9th December 2022 12:19 GMT 
Re: It's always over budget
In this case it's a government contract so it goes more like:
Project Manager “This plane will cost $10M and take a year”
Boss "Ok, we'll ask the government for $30M and tell them it'll be done in a year, and then when it's still not done in four years, we'll ask for another $30M. Then a few years after that, the senator who OK'd the budget increase will get a nice cushy job with us"
Tech contractor who uses an umbrella company? UK tax is coming after them
Fresh version of Xfce, the oldest Linux desktop of them all, revealed in Xubuntu builds
Friday 9th December 2022 10:45 GMT
Just in the process of moving several clients from Mint MATE to Mint XFCE. I've not noticed any change in performance (the hardware is mostly older Atom and Celeron CPUs), but a key advantage for me is that it stores it's configuration as XML rather than using dconf.
(To me, dconf has all the downsides of the Windows Registry, without the benefit of being the sole repository of configuration).
I've also run into a problem that if I disable the screen locker, then the screensaver and power management never trigger.
Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?
Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened
Friday 2nd December 2022 19:32 GMT
Re: Don't forget mischief
They've introduced those electric scooters for hire in my city, and there's also two universities, so not only do you have to check both ways when crossing the road, you also need to keep your wits about you just walking on the pavement.
Drunk students aren't the best road users.
Rolls-Royce, EasyJet fire up first hydrogen-fueled jet engine
Wednesday 30th November 2022 11:56 GMT
To go off on a tangent, in the early 80's Convair were looking at the feasibility of launching a spaceplane off the back of a 747. The idea was to store the hydrogen for the spaceplane inside the 747, so that it could be fuelled up in-flight (avoiding problems with leaks, or at least moving the problems). To add extra performance to the 747, they then planned to modify the jet engines to add hydrogen fuelled afterburners, to launch the spaceplane as high and fast as possible.
Oh, and just to add to the fun, they were looking at using fluorine as the oxidiser in the spaceplane's engines.
I just love the whole concept :)
Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back
Boss broke servers with a careless bit of keyboarding, leaving techies to sort it out late on a Sunday
Massive energy storage system goes online in UK
IT manager's 'think outside the box' edict was, for once, not (only) a revolting cliché
Friday 18th November 2022 13:34 GMT
Re: Static wouldn't have been the only problem
Took one outside, opened case and tipped the dust out, what a mess, thankfully the wind was blowing away from me at the time.
This is a important lesson for everyone in IT, even machines kept in a relatively clean offices get full of manky dust and fluff, and it's always easier to take them outside to open them for the first time.
Looking for a holiday DIY project? Build your own pen-plotter, for under $15
Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000
Monday 14th November 2022 13:45 GMT
Re: You get what you order
I was in my early 20's, and honestly never thought of making a complaint. I'm not sure I'd even have realised I could make a formal complaint without getting a lawyer involved etc.
Damn, even a few hundred quid would have made a big difference to me then, I'd probably just have pissed it away though ;)
Friday 11th November 2022 10:37 GMT
Re: You get what you order
A long while ago my car was rear-ended by a BMW. My car was fine, but I swapped details with the BMW driver, and told my (very cheap) insurance company.
I'm not 100% sure what happened next, but I think the BMW driver told his insurance company that the crash wasn't his fault (not sure how he spun driving into the back of a car stopped at a traffic light as my fault, but anyway). His insurance company then contacted mine. Or at least they tried to, but my company apparently never responded to them.
So, a month or so later, I got a letter telling me that as my insurance company hadn't responded, they were taking me to small claims court. I rang up my insurer, and after a lot of being on hold, I got through to someone who promised that they'd deal with it.
Then I got another letter, saying that as I'd not showed up to court, they'd found against me, and I now owed £600-something, and had a CCJ against me. After yet another phone call to my insurer, they did actually fix everything, but of course, as soon as my contract was up I moved to the next cheapest insurer.
A month or so later they called me up, asking why I'd not renewed with them, so I took great delight in telling the person on the other end of the phone the whole story, and finished by informing them they worked for a shitty company, and that they should quit and work somewhere better :)
The company was elephant.co.uk, and to my surprise, they still seem to be in business.
Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything
Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel
No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them
Friday 28th October 2022 09:57 GMT
There's apparently some religious stuff going on in the winter, but then there seems to be that sort of thing going on all the time so it's not worth paying attention to.
However, the important part is that I get a couple of days off around the 25th of December, and another one off for the 1st of Jan.
That's two different sets of time off, hence, 'holidays' plural.
To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess
Friday 21st October 2022 12:44 GMT
Re: Bad design
Simple - the saddle goes on top of the horse.
If you're paying attention, it's pretty obvious that it only fits properly one way around on the horse, but I'd give the average person only a 50% chance of putting it the right way around first time.
And if it was one of my users I'd probably drop that down to 10%, and be suprised that they hadn't tried putting it on a cow or something.
Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler
This maglev turntable costs more than an average luxury electric car
More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11
Tuesday 11th October 2022 15:45 GMT
Re: Nothing much against Win11 but can't see the point!
The most hated Windows versions are the ones where Microsoft tries to leave behind some of it's legacy cruft and be more secure or stable.
Vista introduced UAC, and changed the driver model, both things that Windows had been lacking for years, but of course, that broke things so it was panned.
PC shipments fall at fastest rate ever as businesses slam wallets shut
If you need a TCP replacement, you won't find a QUIC one
Tuesday 11th October 2022 15:03 GMT
Re: SCTP
(So obligatory that not only can you guess which one it is, you can probably quote the entire thing)
Linus Torvalds's faulty memory (RAM, not wetware) slows kernel development
Monday 10th October 2022 09:17 GMT
Worth noting that all recent AMD CPUs support ECC except Ryzen CPUs with built in graphics (eg Ryzen 5600G). Which is slightly annoying, as otherwise they'd be a good choice for a home NAS.
(As I understand it, all the new Zen4 CPUs will have on board graphics, but will still support full ECC. DDR5 does also come in a full ECC version, as well as the normal stuff having 'sort-of' ECC).
So, anyone want to buy 16GB of DDR4 ECC? Never used (except for a memtest run).
Fortinet warns of critical flaw in its security appliance OSes, admin panels
No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron
HDD Clicker gizmo makes flash sound like spinning rust
Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable
Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms
A match made in heaven: systemd comes to Windows Subsystem for Linux
Sunday 25th September 2022 09:07 GMT
As someone who started out as a Windows admin, I have to admit about half of systemd makes sense to me. Half of it seems to be wilfully over-complicated for no obvious benefit though.
(When Windows is over-complicated there is usually a reason. That reason is usually 'a massive customer wanted it and now everyone has to live with it', but hey, at least it's a reason.)
You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis
School chat app Seesaw abused to send 'inappropriate image' to parents, teachers
Saturday 17th September 2022 12:11 GMT 
Glad to see Goatse is still getting some use, reminds me of the time Jason Scott Goatse'd Myspace.
Backblaze thinks SSDs are more reliable than hard drives
Wednesday 14th September 2022 15:56 GMT
Re: Well, maybe
Might be worth ordering some spares when you get the replacement drive. One thing I've noticed with SSDs is that all the drives in a single batch tend to fail quite close to each other.
I've always found harddrive to be a bit more random in their failures, two harddrives with consecutive serial numbers might fail years apart, but with SSDs they're often only months apart.
Tuesday 13th September 2022 14:17 GMT
If you're at the stage of trying to recover data from dead media, then several other things have gone wrong already. Such as RAID and backups.
(Although, as these are boot drives, I wouldn't be surprised if they're not backed up per se, but instead Backblaze have a procedure for rebuilding on a fresh drive, as if it was a brand new server)
Musk seeks yet another excuse to get out of Twitter buyout: This time it's Mudge's severance check
Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C8H10N4O2
Monday 12th September 2022 09:37 GMT
Re: Coffee...
Modern keyboards are still robust enough to scrub in the sink, I had to do it just last week to a cheapy HP model.
I did remove the electronics first, I'm sure they'd have been fine with a bit of tap water, but I'd have had to wait longer to make sure they were dry. I also already had to take the keyboard apart to clean it properly.
Monday 12th September 2022 09:32 GMT
Re: Better yet...
A friend managed to spill espresso across her laptop. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to pull the power and the battery straight away, and then brought it to me for a once over before trying to turn it back on.
(If only our users were as sensible as our friends!).
Apart from a bit of cleaning, it was basically ok, but as soon as it warmed up, the scent of espresso began to waft.
She was quite happy with her coffee-scented laptop, but personally I can't stand the smell or taste of the stuff :(
Terminal downgrade saves the day after a client/server heist
How important are tech and other contractors to UK? PM candidate promises tax review if elected
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
