Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: A3 devices

I rescued my old Epson the other week by wadding up wet tissues thick enough to slide under the head to dissolve and wick out the dried up ink. Since I only had the one to experiment with and didn't want to damage it, I repeated this about 10 times over a couple of days. It now works almost as good as new with a cheap set of refilled tanks. Now I need to consider if I have enough use for it to buy some bottles of ink to re-fit and refill the CIF tanks.

Re: Need to print

"Our main use of office printer seems to be expense claims."

Is this a solicitors/lawyers office? I've been emailing mine in, with photos/scans of receipts for at least the last 15 years, probably more like 20 years.

Re: Need to print

For clarity, a lot of office printers are pay per page including toner, staples where applicable and repairs. The customer only provides the paper and pays the monthly fees, which, IIRC, is a minimum rental fee ie they always pay for the first 50000 pages then it goes up per page from there. The ones we lease email us if there's a problem and auto-order consumables a couple of days before they will be needed which are shipped direct to the printer location, not just the company/org goods inwards

(I'm not directly involved in that side of our business, tany figures quoted are for illustrative and entertainment purposes only :-))

Re: Tape

I've still got SF books I bought at as a young teen which I still read. Even the ones I bought new are nearly 50 years old. Many were 10, 20 or more years older when I bought them and I still re-read them now and then. Most were paperback, so not exactly high quality paper and they've lived in bookcases, not humidity controlled environments. A very small number are "delicate" in that the spine binding glue has given out, but the paper, despite some yellowing, is fine, even after being in my school blazer pocket sometimes for days at a time. Many are a bit ratty looking and worn, but they were second hand and looked like that when I bought them :-)

Re: Hmm

On the other hand, many houses are empty during the day when solar energy collection is at it's highest. Unless you have your own local storage, it's being "wasted" if you don't or can't feed it into the grid either for use elsewhere or storage for later.

Re: Not more bloody battle scenes

Yeah, I'm kinda hoping it will have the "based on..." disclaimer. Use the world, and tell new stories, or at least add significantly to the existing stories. After all, it's an episodic TV series not a feature length film. They have the time to develop the characters slowly and properly.

On the other hand, it's a huge budget and they want massive ratings, so I'm expecting more explosions, car crashes and laser blasts than ever before!!!

"There's going to be vampires in it, right?"

And zombies! Don't forget the zombies!

Re: Fly me to the moon

Yeah, no heat, just go do it Jeff!

(Stay on the dark side if you don't want the heat; not forgetting to leave before it rotates into the sunny side.)

Re: Go Fever

"I wonder if the mad rush to the first Starship orbital launch is for a "in your face" directed at Bezos' for his argument against SpaceX selection being that Starship is an unproven platform."

I doubt SpaceX were concerned over that barb. It's not as if New Glenn is a proven platform yet either.

I'm not sure I have much faith in Blue Origin anyway after getting this message from their home page "We're sorry but Blue Origin doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue."

Would you flying in anything "powered by JavaScript"?

"People are just fool enough to buy into the scheme."

By "people", you mean governments too I hope, baring in mind that some ISO standards are legally mandated in many jurisdictions, so the businesses are forced to spend that money to access the standards.

Re: Eye opener

Same here, except I learned that ISO so-called standards are not free to access from a previous Reg article a little while ago. I'm still finding it pretty gobsmacking though. As many have commented, how are people supposed to understand "standards" if they can;t get reasonable access to them? How are small companies and start-ups supposed to compete if they have this paywall hurdle to get over?

Re: Incredibly sloppy BOFH's

"I hope the PFY wiped down the usb key before he took a day off ~to the pub~ sick."

It crossed my mind that this may have been the PFYs final exam before becoming a BOFH in his own right and moving onto to his own infernal domain, taking a nice wodge of cash with him for "moving expenses".

Re: So he was "visiting" during working hours

What if it's a USB storage device that tells the PC it's a keyboard then starts sending keyboard shortcuts to open a command shell followed by nefarious commands?

Re: Get it on paper

There's a short FAQ on the back, only the front is relevant, so yes, folding in half and then laminating is a viable option.

Re: but there is logic

Was it first initial/lastname and Freda Uck and Edwin Ore complained?

Re: I'm not sure

"Masks and social distancing haven't stopped the usual colds and sneezes from going around, especially in my kid's nursery."

Just as a control number, how many of those kids at nursery were staying 2m apart, wearing masks and washing their hands regularly between sharing the toys, like adults were in their work places?

Re: Acid test

"Talking of acid tests - my workplace has been open the entire time, with technicians making (essential) trips all over the country multiple times a week. 0 Covid so far."

Similar here. But only the essential staff who could not work from home. Those of us making trips all over the country, including hotel stays, were very, very cautious and careful. There has been covid cases, both back at base and the field team, but thankfully few of them, thanks to proper precautions being taken and the customers setting up separate clean areas for us to work in while on site.

BTW, for anyone who didn't get the chance to stay in a hotel for work purposes during lockdown, no, it's not fun. Room service only from a VERY limited menu, bars and all other communal areas closed obviously and nowhere else to go.

Re: Q: How many system administrators does it take to change a light bulb?

and "have you updated to the latest firmware?"

(although, sadly, if we are talking "smart" bulbs, that might actually be a real solution nowadays)

Re: First and only thought

Why would anyone take a job with a fixed salary and no overtime? Unless it's a very big salary that effectively takes into account expected overtime whether it's actually worked or not. I can understand that for contractors who are being paid for an outcome, but not employees.

Re: First and only thought

"Apparently the facilities guy, Windows admins and software developers weren't trusted to read a label on a box of bog rolls, or tell it from a keyboard."

Sometimes, just sometimes, it might mean they REALLY did not see that as part of their job and so deliberately made mistakes so as not to be asked again. Unix guys are just too helpful and superior to do a job a badly, so get lumbered with those tasks while the Windows sysadmins look on and smirk and have lots of extra time to do their daily rebuild of their Exchange databases, do the weekly rebuild of their servers and generally stare at BSODs. Oh, and of course the Unix guys have a plenty of spare time for jobs like portering because they built their servers properly in the first place :-)))

Re: We can't believe people use browsers to manage their passwords

"The advice I never see given is to use different emails as well as different passwords."

I was about to say the same thing.

For a lot of online stuff such as forums etc, I use variations of a common themed password, but each has a unique username/email address made up from something related to the site and usually some number. If a site gets hacked/raided/whatever, the miscreants won't get enough data to be able to use elsewhere.

Re: Training

"Requiring at least one lower case letter, one upper case letter, one special character, one digit etc. just means that the password will be written down or stored in a text file."

Yes, a password along the lines of SomewhereOvertheRainbowWhereBlackbirdsShagAllDayLong is probably a bit more secure than MyP455word! and probably more memorable for a human. But few system allow passwords that long and they pretty much all requires numbers and "special" characters.

But as you point out, passwords alone can't protect against keyloggers.

"For those not using just one platform, it has to be a platform independent solution."

Or at least a similar app on each platform using a common storage system that can be either USB drive access from any of those platforms, or at least able to sync/copy between platforms.

Re: Lynched?

"the losses suffered by American investors "

Yeah, that specific bit of the quote sort of jumps out a bit. Are only Americans allowed to buy HP shares these days?