Posts by John Brown (no body) 25376 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
My one and only time through CDG was aged 14 or 15 in the mid to late 70's when the place was new and I'd never flown before. It was exciting and the escalators/travelators through the plastic tubes was all SciFi to me :-) On the other hand, brutalist concrete architecture doesn't age well unless you shot blast it clean every now and then to make it look all clean and new.
"3 meals air-side and the wasted day came out of my departments budgets!"
Of course! That's how accountants and expenses departments work. The money in your departmental budget is already "spent" and it's not their problem how and when you spend it. But making a saving from their budget, however small, is worthwhile and adds to their end of year bonus :-)
"my personal favourite from that era, SysRq."
"That era"??? I'm typing this on my Toshy laptop that has SysRq on the PtrSc key. Ok, it's about 8-10 years old, but certainly not the late 1980's and I don't think I've ever used that key function :-)
Next to that key is one labelled "Pause" as the main function and "Break" as the secondary function. Again, something almost never used these days. Pause used to be handy for pausing long screen listing scrolling up the screen, but most systems scroll too fast for that to be usable these days :-)
"Or, you could accept that your company operates internationally, with different languages and therefore different end user needs..."
I get the impression that many US multi-nationals have an ingrained cultural problem with seeing geographic regions as far, far more diverse than the conglomeration that is The United States of America. But often it's those same multi-nationals that have, for their own convenience, lumped those disparate sovereign countries into geographical regions such as "Europe", "EMEA" etc.
One company we contracted for many years ago was an international hotel chain headquartered in Paris, where their IT support was also based and where they shipped spare parts from. I quickly got used to replacing motherboards and setting them up with the BIOS config in German, French, Spanish etc as they just sent out the correct board, whatever the localisation of the firmware :-) Interestingly, they had standardised on IBM PS/2 desktops so finding non-English BIOS screens from a US corporation was interesting and unexpected at the time. Even today, it's not uncommon to find HP printers still defaulting to US letter, in an international market where only the US uses US letter, when doing a factory reset :-)
To be fair, having two different keyboards connected at the same is probably a fairly niche use case, more niche even than having two identical keyboards connected other than in specialised situations where there may be a special custom keyboard for specific use which will most commonly be operated by either it's own driver or the program/app that requires it, eg a PC being used as a cash register or information kiosk.
...unless you don't speak English :-)
eg List of local translation for "June"
It's fairly clear to most(not all) that it's the 30th day of "something" in 2023, but which "something"? We can eliminate Feb, but that still leave 11 months to pick from :-)
"And note that today we can't even properly control vehicles in two dimensions, let alone three."
I suspect computer controlled flying cars in strictly geo-fenced "airways" will be a LOT easier than cars on the public roads where most cars are currently manually controlled. Those geo-fenced airways will ONLY have computer controlled flying cars in them and no other obstructions. Whether it will be economic to have that sort of restricted airspace and infrastructure is another matter. I doubt there will ever be the free-for-all the ICE cars have been given through most of their history. Safety is far higher up the agenda these days and flying cars are going to have to be SAFE from day 1. Which means take up will be slow along with long term design and real world experience and the required infrastructure.
"And why is that happening? Because we waste all those resources on roads, parking lots and godamn car-centric infrastructure."
It seems to be all stick and no carrot. Clean Air/Congestion zones in some UK cities. Fines for the city Council if they don't introduce them and "clean" the air. When they do introduce them, they get hooked on the income it generates from "fining" people and business who don't/won't/can't switch to EV or hybrids and they "promise" the money from the fines will, eventually, some day, be used to "improve" public transport. The obvious solution to most people would be to invest in the public transport first, look on it as a loan that will be paid back from the "fines" that come later or, better yet, investing in and encouraging people on to public transport first results in the cleaner air they want.
That latter is how the publicity around the new fleet of trains for our local light rail system is being put over. The reality is that the 40 year old rolling stock, with an expected lifespan of 20 years, is desperately in need of replacement anyway. I mean, FFS, the *prototype* trains, two of them, used for training the drivers and were never even supposed to go into service, are still running the daily commute 40 years later! And the new modern trains are all sideways bench seats, so far fewer seats and lots more space to cram in standing passengers to make the journey even more fun. Admittedly, at peak times on the busiest parts, trains run about every 6 minutes, you can't really cram more trains into that route and the city centre stations are underground so you you can't easily build longer platforms either. The biggest issue is probably when the system was built, public transport was publicly owned and all meshed together with buses feeding the trains. With separate privately owned bus companies competing with each other and the light rail network, it's never going to be great.
True, but they are little further forward than the Wright Bros. were when they started flying, or the early car makers. The pioneers of private car ownership had to plan their journeys just as carefully to have a chance of re-fuelling for the return trip too. It'll be interesting to watch and see if the advancements in duration are equivalent, bearing in mind the battery chemistry and physics.
You may say that now. But over time, I see that changing. It takes time to learn to fly a conventional RC aircraft, but give a kid a drone/quadcopter and a smart phone and off they go, with little to no instruction.
Yeah, yeah, I know, even toy drones crash, but the point is they are very, very easy to fly. A flying car of equivalent, probably much better, self-handling such that the "pilot" only needs to point it in the right direction will probably need little more than a car driving licence to a reasonable standard, eg a "proper" test, not the sort of tests some countries and even some US States currently have where it's barely more than pointing to the steering wheel correctly for a pass :-)
"and next time I am tinkering in the server rack it will be unplugged & trashed."
You should email them first and tell them you no longer wish to participate. They may want the box back. Depends when they last sent you a new one, but best to cover yourself. In my case, a good few years ago, they offered to send me a pre-paid Jiffy-bag to return or I could keep/dispose of it myself. I chose the latter and flashed the firmware to give it a new lease of life.
"The TP-link device's 100 Mbps FE interface became obsolete when my internet connection increased. I applied for a newer box and never got a response. I'd do it again if I had the chance."
Similar here. They didn't want the box back. So I got a USB to RS232 adaptor which attached to the RS232 header on the router board[*} and flashed it with DDWRT and it's been my wireless access point ever since on a separate VLAN.
[*] SamKnows monitoring routers arrive pre-flashed with their custom firmware and you can't get into it through the web interface, telnet, ssh etc., they are very well locked down.
"Want to take a wager that IBM's HR dept hasn't run the numbers on it?"
And yet, they continue to get rid of the older workers, those unlikely to be getting pregnant? If maternity pay was a concern, they'd be hiring more older women and more men and avoid hiring women of "child bearing age". Clearly this a much more complicated subject than we thought and IBM HR and accounts people are still studying it? It all sounds more complicates than Disaster Areas accounts.
"I wouldn't then be able to claim copyright to it."
Not to the transcript, no, but you do own the copyright to that specific representation of the transcript. Others can make their own transcripts, but can't just take and publish your transcript without permission. But the content of transcript itself is probably already a copyright breach anyway once published :-) I can take a photo of red London double decker bus and own the copyright in that work. But I don't own the copyright to the design of the bus or any other objects in the photo and at least in that case, the owner of the design copyright can't claim I'm stealing their works unlike the copyright owner of the movie script you just copied.
In that specific instance, if Genius had obtained the rights to use the lyrics, they would own the copyright on their specific rendering of the lyrics so I think the would have a case. The problem is they don't appear to have the rights to use those lyrics and are themselves IMHO breaching copyright by publishing them in the first place. I'm thinking here in particular of audiobooks. The author holds the rights to the story, the audiobook company purchases the rights to make the audiobook and in turn own the copyright on that performance recording. Others can also buy/lease other rights from the author, even to make their own audiobook so long as the first company wasn't sold exclusive rights, but no one has the right to just make a copy of an existing audiobook and publish it as their own.
But, as I started out with, this is predicated on buy the rights or otherwise obtaining permission. If what you publish is someone else's copyrighted work, no matter how you obtained it, you can't publish without permission so I suspect the courts turned this case down because they REALLY didn't want to open that can of worms. User generated content in particular is a potential bubble that if looked at too closely could burst and affect enormous chunks of the internet if IP rights are fully and properly enforced.
I can sit down and type out the lyrics of a song for my own use legally. But submitting that file to be published on a website specialising in publishing users transcriptions of copyright works is on very shaky legal ground for the publisher and, theoretically, for those submitting the works.
Exactly. There may have been a 1500+% increase in searches for the T&Cs[1] but what's that an increase from? Normally it's 2 or 3 and now it's a few 1000? And how many understood the T&Cs and decided to cancel? Answer to that latter is likely zero or close enough not to be measurable :-)
[1] Why? Surely it's linked from the bottom of every page, who can't find the Netflix site, especially if you are already a subscriber.
"Amazing that this is legal."
My bank is, I think, the only entity I deal with that tells me about changes to the Ts&Cs by sending a letter or email stating which clauses have changed, been removed or been added instead of the entire things. This may be covered by financial regulations, I wouldn't know, but it does make it abundantly clear what has changed, which is refreshing :-)
"UK law specifies that *anything* can be returned if it's broken/not fit for purpose/etc etc."
That bit is true. I suspect the confusion was over buying something and returning it simply because you changed your mind and decided you didn't like the colour or something. Most places will take those sort of returns in many cases but AFAIK are not obliged too. If something is custom made, such as is often the case with window blinds, they are almost always classed a non-returnable unless there is a manufacturing defect. That's in-person purchases. Distance selling regulations are different.
"Keyboards ARE filthy, filthy things and under ideal circumstances shouldn't be shared."
Hot desking has been a thing for some time now, and made a lot worse by partial WFH and smaller open plan offices, making the issue even worse.
The one place I go where I use the hot desking system, for an entirely different reason, I use the laptop k/b, not the one plugged into the display/hub thing.
My reason, is that I use a laptop so much these days, the cheap nasty keyboards on the desk feel uncomfortable. I do have a nice proper keyboard at home with a perfect, for me, angle and a perfectly concave shape to the key caps just right for my fat fingers! I do, however, use the attached mouse at the hot desk, and they do always look clean to me although I've not checked closely. There's no obvious build up of dirt/sweat on the buttons or sides or other regular contact spots. Maybe the cleaners wipe them down at night?
Nah. The article says the contractors assured bot JP Morgan and the SEC that their processes were compliant. I don't really see how any contractual indemnity could get them out of that mess. So, assuming JP Morgan are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they should of course as you said, be starting the process of suing the contractor for the full amount of the fine and all associated costs resulting from the investigation and legal process.
"Those windows that people fall out are pretty high up."
Let's hope the FSB don't read here. I'm sure they will very interested if they find Yevgeny Prigozhin anywhere higher than the ground/first floor :-)
On second thoughts, they probably already read BOFH as an instruction manual. There is form in Russia for people accidentality falling from high windows already.
I don't know who coined the term 'folder'
Amiga Workbench used "Drawer". Gem used folders and pre-dates Windows. Apples Lisa also used folders and most likely followed the design ideas from Xerox Parcs Alto. So "folders" were probably coined at Xerox in late 70's as visual representations of what "under the hood" were still called directories in the OS.
"some HR bod realised that when they entered my sort code into excel it truncated the first number, which was 0"
Considering someone in HR "discovered" a technical issue with Excel, that's pretty impressive!
I'm still with the same bank that I switched to when I got my first job (Same bank as then employer, so money went in a day early!) and the sort code not only starts with a zero but is a for a branch that is long gone now (Must be 20 years since that was demolished for a new road!) :-) I've never had any issues through any systems where my bank details are required though.
And phone numbers! Certainly in the pre-GUI days, a lot of S/W came from the US and was rarely, if ever, localised for other markets, and when it was, it was a half arsed job. I remember an early "office suite" in the DOS days where you simply could not use the "phone number" type field when creating a database. Just a generic "number" field set to a length to suit UK phone numbers. IIRC, I think I used two fields, STD and Phone so the data entry/display template screens could include the parenthesis around the STD code. Little did we know back then there was going to be not one but TWO (or three??)great national phone renumbering schemes. I'd hope my database design was long out of use by then through.
Even today, I still find it odd that UK software expects mobile phone numbers to be one long string with no separators for what is effectively the STD code and number, probably because you have to dial it anyway. AFAIK, there's no option to dial just the "number" for someone on the same "STD" code as your mobile phone. When giving my number out, I still speak it as 5-digit code and then 2 groups of three for the number though. I'm old fashioned like that :-)
(For US readers, UK mobile phones have unique dialling codes that do not overlap with the landline phone system, you can always easily tell if you calling a landline or a mobile phone, which historically meant you could tell roughly how expensive the call was going to be. Calling a mobile used to cost significantly more than a landline, likewise on or off network could be significantly different on mobile to mobile calls and each operator used to have their own dialling codes before number porting became standard)
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