Posts by roytrubshaw

Think of it as an assignment statement.

Destination = Source

Later (much), Dec introduced the Dec Command Language (DCL) interpreter, which converted:

copy source destination

Into

pip destination source

But those of us that had to use more than one type of Dec system or O/S would generally go straight to the underlying utility as DCL was not always available.

(Surprisingly IIRC, RT-11 was one of those that did - I preferred RSX myself, though VMS was OK too; my first Dec O/S was TOPS-10 (sigh) those were the days!)

Re: I inherited one

In the 70s Essex university had the Internal Telephone System or ITS.

The extension of ITS to add a phone to every floor of the student accommodation on campus (the infamous tower blocks - of which there were 6) was named ... you guessed it, the Towers Internal Telephone System or TITS.

Much innocent enjoyment was had at University Radio Essex inviting listeners to 'phone in requests on TITS nnnn

Simpler times!

Re: Less than one character per week

I heard an answer to the question, "How long is a piece of string?" a couple of years ago.

The answer: "Twice as long as half its length"

Obviously this can be generalised to "n times as long as 1/n its length"

YMMV (Though I am not sure how.)

Re: Loss of the ability.....

"I'm off to the pub for a liquid "lunch""

Don't forget the salted peanuts ...

Icon for the Vogons ----->

"But you have to turn on "insecure access mode" in Gmail preferences to use them."

I don't remember doing that when I set up Thunderbird to access my Gmail account (nor my Yahoo account for that matter).

YMMV

Re: Props to SpaceX

At this rate SpaceX will have completed all their Commercial Crew launches before Boeing has completed the testing!

So much for showing the upstarts "how it should be done".

Re: Ah. Well, ahem...!

Obligatory xkcd reference:

https://xkcd.com/936/

Because it's Friday ------->

Re: Not a library csrd

"... neither ... nor ..."

Kudos for correct usage! :)

Re: OK, I'll take one for the team

"... you flaming galah?"

...you flaming, Bundaberg-swilling, galah?

FIFY?

"When something is branded as an "experience" it is never going to be good!"

I think it's the word "modern" that is the red flag.

No doubt there are a lot of Jimi Hendrix fans that will contradict your use of "experience" for that purpose!

I see your borked network switch and raise you an entire server room!

So the guy was here to service the UPS; so of course I have to switch the server room over to the mains.

There are two switches:

1) A bypass switch - to allow the current from the mains to reach the UPS ring-circuit directly

2) An isolation switch - to isolate the UPS from the UPS ring-circuit.

He couldn't do the switch-over as he wasn't allowed to.

So the customer (me) had to do it. This was something I had done several times before (I had actually installed the UPS originally) so no problem!

Guess which switch I inexplicably threw first?

Cue the silence of thirty (or more) servers (and their cooling fans) suddenly going very quiet!

Cue the red-faced guy quickly turning on the bypass switch and hoping that no-one "upstairs" will notice the short outage!

Re: The endless story

"make something 'idiot-proof' and nature breeds a better idiot.

Evolution in action....."

Kudos for the Darwin Awards reference :).

What worries me is that (in my limited understanding of natural selection) any trait that one is not actively selecting for, is actively de-selected; so if intelligence is not a requirement to stay alive (at least long enough to have children) it must be the case that we are getting stupider.

Mine's the one with the dog-eared copy of "Oath of Fealty" in the pocket!

"One of the quotes I gave I'd inflated by nearly 10x ..."

That's OK as far as it goes, but 10x is nowhere near large enough! 10x is more like "Please go away."

"Fuck Off!" starts off at at least 3 orders of magnitude greater than the original price!

:)

Re: Isn’t this just the modern (modern?) equivalent...

"More like using a complex betting site than “real” trading"

<pedantry>

"Real" trading is just betting.

You're betting that your take on the market is better than everyone else's.

Hence the rise of financial spread betting as a hedge for any position you may be taking.

</pedantry>

Re: FAT fail

"File Allocation Table is terrible design for SSD devices because ...."

It's a terrible design for discs too, causing unnecessary head movements, undue wear of the first few data tracks and so on and so forth.

It's good for indexed tapes as you read the file-information first so you know where everything is.

DECTape anyone? (I still have one or two in a box somewhere.)

Re: A hard lesson...

"... and the DASD, that had ..."

Ah the old IBM "sow FUD with obscure terminology and names".

OEM salesman: If you buy your disks from us you can save oodles of cash.

IBM user: What are these "disks" of which you speak? Anyway we don't have them!"

OEM salesman: Our disks are much cheaper and they are plug compatible; only your wallet will notice the difference!

IBM user: Begone! We don't need your "disks"!

OEM salesman: All modern computers have disks! Where do you save all your files, otherwise?

IBM user: Our computers use the very latest and greatest Dynamic Access Storage Devices (DASDs), we don't need these "disks"!

OK, probably apocryphal but those were the days!

Re: How to switch?

I think there needs to be a "distro sync" in there somewhere.

I was intrigued by the fact that when I did that it downgraded my Apache installation - weird given that stream is suppose to be "upstream".

Re: Slugs don't have fur

"The thermostat gubbins is s bit if electrickery "

... is a bit of ...

I think a cat may have been involved.

But thanks for the copper-plated slug image!

(Weird US electoral system)

"... number of them still going on about how "Trump will win" despite having already LOST."

<pedantry>

Strictly speaking the electoral college, that actually votes on who will be the next US president hasn't voted yet, so it's possible that "faithless" electors could vote for Trump.

The US Presidential Election is just a gigantic opinion poll and despite what the voters think, they are NOT voting for the next President.

</pendantry>

As you were folks!

Re: more than software

" ... if the MAX will have actually turned out to have been cheaper and quicker to deliver than a clean sheet design ..."

The short answer is probably "no".

Re: Battle Space

That was my best Christmas Pressy ever!

I had the satellite launcher, the searchlight, helicopter, the single rocket launcher (you could stick a cap in the "warhead" so it would go "bang" when it landed), and the four-rocket launcher!

The rockets had lead noses (something pretty dense anyway - possibly tungsten?), none of your Health & Safety here mate!

The pickups for the searchlight were a bit tempramental and you had to stop the locomotive (and remove it from the track) to get the best light but I didn't care!

Thanks for the memory F&N!

Re: So... looking at their alternative names...

I'd be interested to see the reaction of the Car industry to renaming the "brake master cylinder" to "brake parent cylinder"?

I'm sure there are innumerable car workers / mechanics who have been offended by the original name.

Re: How many more can they afford?

They probably did run tests, but if the sense wire and the actuator wire are in the same bundle then the test would pass...

Re: To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers -Frank Herbert

I know this is old hat but you don't really need to share a key, private or otherwise:

1) Alice encrypts her message and sends it to Bob.

2) Bob encrypts Alices's encrypted message and sends it back to Alice.

3) Alice decrypts the doubly-encrypted message and sends it back to Bob.

4) Bob decrypts the message to retrieve the plaintext.

Obviously you would need to involve Charlie and Diane (and possibly Edward and Felicity) to avoid the to obvious back-and-forth between Alice and Bob, but no keys have been exchanged.

Just sayin'

Re: Two alternative options

Or

3) the Vogons demolished it to make way for a hyperspace bypass

Where are the "Beware of the Leopard" signs when you need one?

Has it really been over 19 years?

Re: Problems with photo copiers

If I remember correctly, this was about the compression algorithm.

They used one of the JPEG 'lossy' algorithms and when they uncompressed the scan to print it, it resulted in the changes described.

It seems photocopiers are now just single purpose scanners and printers.

Re: When hell

<Pedant>According to Dante, hell *is* frozen; at the centre anyway.</Pedant>

Re: Moved to France

You need to move. :)

I lived in Woluwe St. Lambert for three years. Lovely area, lovely landlady, and only a 15 minute bus-ride on the number 20 to the office (just down the road from the Berlaymont).

The only fly in the ointment was the annual wait in line to renew your "temporary" ID and residence permit.

I'm not dodging taxes

"Simply don't try and dodge taxes..."

I'm employed by my own limited company, I pay NI and PAYE. I employ my wife as my PA, she pays NI and PAYE.

My contract is with an Agency and their contract is with yet another company that supplies their services to the client.

According to CEST I should be registered as an employee. Which is just silly as I already *am* an employee!

My advice is to get your contracts reviewed by a solicitor that specialises in IR35 and get the changes that they suggest applied to your contract. In every case my agency has been happy to do this, as the last thing they want is to see their revenue interrupted.

Re: This is the Bizarro Universe

"Hell must be frozen over..."

<pedant>

The inner circle of Hell is a frozen lake.

So Hell is frozen over!

</pedant>

Re: Several things happening

Kudos for the correct use of 'decimate', though I thought it was only applied to losing legions.

I think most people are worried by the sheer impersonal nature of it, though I've read elsewhere that they automatically receive two-months wages, so that's something.

My sympathies lie with the 10%.

Re: Naming conventions

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Elon is trying to replicate all of the technology in "Oath of Fealty"?

• He's investing heavily in AI and Neural implants.
• He owns a tunnel boring company (and several tunnel boring machines).
• Tony Rand (the chief engineer) uses the creation of the Arcology as practise for building a 'Generation Starship' (OK this last one is a bit weak - but he did change the name to "Starship")

Mine's the one with the 27-year old paperback in the pocket

Re: I can't believe no-one's mentioned TeX versioning yet

So that means we have Linux asymptotically approaching τ (tau)!

(Still sad we passed the terminator kernel version without much of a fanfare!)

"... (though TESS will be on a "flight proven" Block 4, ..."

<pedant>

I'm pretty sure that it's the last of the Block 4s and it's a new booster (B1045 I think). The design is flight proven, but this booster isn't.

As you were gentlefolk!

</pedant>

Re: Not Surprised

"There are few good reasons not to use 2FA (and I can't think of any outside of, possibly, some for users with disabilities)"

I have no cell-phone coverage, thus whenever I have to receive one of these code numbers, I must drive a mile or so until I reach a safe place to stop and wait for my 'phone to wake up to the fact that there is now signal and for the SMSC to wake up and forward the text messages it has accumulated for me, and once I have received the code I have to drive back and hope that the process I have started will allow me to carry on from where I left off.

This is tedious.

I do - in fact - have 2FA enabled on my google accounts and I always have to go through the "more options" | use backup codes route; but at least Google provides this option, my ire is directed at the other sites which refuse to acknowledge the possibility of less than 100% coverage for 100% of all networks!

"I see Face ID as a replacement for Touch ID, not the passcode."

Hear! Hear!

Can we all have a chorus of: "Biometrics are a user id NOT a password!"

Re: 60 square degrees

"... is still a hell of a lot of sky to scan for something ..."

Given that there are about 41253 square degrees in a sphere then reducing the search area to just 60 is not bad though.

Re: ASIC anyone?

"... with Ant miner S9"

Kudos to BitMainTech for the use of "thrice" in a world of the ever-increasing Americanisms: three-times, two-times and even - the horror of it - one-time.

:)

Re: Blind support

"So on this case, Hutchins denies the charge. He might be innocent. He might be guilty."

<pedant>

He is is definitely innocent, since he has not been proven guilty.

That's what presumption of innocence means.

It's why the verdict is either guilty or not guilty, since one is presumed to be innocent, there is no need to be declared 'innocent'

</pedant>