IT'S HAPPENING, WE'RE DRAINING THE SWAMP. #draintheswamp GETTING RID OF ALL THE WATER BY FILLING IT WITH REPTILES. #displacement
Posts by Nolveys
811 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Nov 2012
FCC's Pai: I am going to kill net neutrality in US
Microsoft cracks open patch mega-bundles for biz admins, will separate security, stability fixes
Less than four weeks till DevOps' finest assemble in London
Monday 24th April 2017 06:12 GMT 
We have six workshops covering key tools and methodologies.
The Perfect Hair
You'll learn the part, the slick-back and the mighty pompadour. Learn which products will give the best results.
The Winning Smile
The strengths and drawbacks of popular tooth-whitening technologies will be covered. We will also discuss proper smiling techniques that will help you seal the deal. Do you think that the sparkle that comes from light reflecting off perfect teeth is an accident? It is not, we will teach you how.
The Clothes Make The Success
How do you choose the best clothes? What situations call for casual, business casual or the full-on suit? When you dress for success expect the best.
Talk The Talk
How will your business-oriented enterprise success paradigm actualization be effected by forward-thinking, results-driven operative management methodologies? What is the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive diractance? Who cares!? Baffle and bedazzle those who sign the cheques. Learn quick soundbites that can be used to instantly shut down people who actually know what they are talking about. You don't have to walk the walk when you can talk the talk.
Proper Waste Disposal Technique
Sick of having to deal with long-time employees who actually care about the future of the business? We will teach you how to throw them under the bus in style. Learn how to create impossible tasks with which to make them look completely incompetent. Take credit for other people's work with confidence and pizzazz. Get people fired for no reason at all. Anything is possible when you learn to take ownership of your subordinates.
Upward Mobility Strategy
In this workshop we combine the lessons learned in earlier workshops to form strategies for moving onward and upward. Why get subordinates fired when you can get your boss fired and take the position in one master stroke? You will learn to use your charm, bullshit and your perfect teeth and hair to get real results. Do you dream of receiving a seven-figure bonus while laying off 70% of staff? Then this workshop is for you.
CompSci boffins find Reddit is ideal source for sarcasm database
Monday 24th April 2017 01:58 GMT
Early Failures In Sarcastic Computing Technology
"I wonder if it's safe to open the hatch yet. Computer, has the pressure equalized between the inner and outer chambers?"
"Yes, the pressure is completely equal between the chambers. There is no deadly pressure differential whatsoever. Feel free to open the hatch whenever you feel like it."
systemd-free Devuan Linux hits version 1.0.0
Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard
Friday 21st April 2017 14:09 GMT
Re: Meow
How the heck did you manage to do that? WE NEED TO KNOW!
First I picked up the frog and then the frog peed in my eye. Sorry, there really isn't much of a story there, not like the time I found myself being dragged across the forest floor by a rope that was attached to the top of a falling tree. But that's a story for another day.
Friday 21st April 2017 10:28 GMT
Meow
I had to deal with a laptop in the 90's that someone's cat had peed on. I would have thought it was battery acid if it weren't for the overpowering odour.
The pee had made it through to the main board, causing any exposed metal on component pins to rust. Also some of the runs leading away from the components had rusted and the laminate was peeling off.
The hdd still worked fine though.
That was far from the grossest thing I've dealt with in IT and certainly in life. I've shoveled pig shit, dealt with a light fixture that had filled with poo water after a housemate overflowed a toilet on the second floor, dealt with RV tank overflow, got a high pressure blast of sludge (sewage with the grease and most liquid removed) to the face and once had a frog pee in my eye.
Jim needs to spend some time on a farm or something.
Please don't call them Facebook chatbots, says Facebook's bot boss
IBM. Sigh. Revenues. Sigh. Down. Sigh. For the 20th quarter in a row
Wednesday 19th April 2017 07:25 GMT
IBM should task Watson with the job of fixing the company.
Did you ever see the Looney Tunes episode in which Bugs Bunny and Yosamite Sam are in the cockpit of a plane that's falling from the sky? One of them presses the autopilot button causing a robotic pilot to spring to life, assess the situation, grab one of only two parachutes and abandon the whole situation.
Microsoft and Rambus will get schwifty in quantum-cum-cryogenic computation collab
Naked Androids to rampage across Russia
NASA agent faces heat for 'degrading' moon rock sting during which grandmother wet herself
Leaked NSA point-and-pwn hack tools menace Win2k to Windows 8
Saturday 15th April 2017 04:50 GMT
Damn it NSA,
you had one job.
So there's the honourable Mr. Snowden, who went public. Then there's the not so honourable Shadow Brokers...who went public.
I would think that most people, were they to take the time and risk to smuggle stuff out of the NSA, would want to sell their plunder as quickly and quietly as possible. Kind of makes me wonder how many other NSA care packages are out there.
Also, any theories as to the weird and broken English in the SB messages? You'd think they would have someone who could string a sentence together.
Linux remote root bug menace: Make sure your servers, PCs, gizmos, Android kit are patched
Microsoft raises pistol, pulls the trigger on Windows 7, 8 updates for new Intel, AMD chips
Verizon's bogus bills tanked my credit score, claims sueball slinger
Troll it your way: Burger King ad tries to hijack Google Home gadgets
Trump's govt hiring freeze means there's no US Privacy Shield chief: We tracked down the woman filling in for now
FCC kills plan to allow phone calls on planes – good idea or terrible?
Tuesday 11th April 2017 03:15 GMT
Public Cell Conversations
People tend to phone me if their stuff is broken and they need it fixed immediately (probably because I tell them to only phone me if their stuff is broken and they need it fixed immediately). On those rare occasions when I am in public and the issue is actually important I skulk off into the corner and, while hunched over, speak as quietly as possibly and end the conversation as quickly as I can...
...and I still feel dirty.
Eric S. Raymond says you probably fit one of eight tech archetypes
Did you buy anything from Microsoft's glum Apple Store knockoff? You may be owed $100
PC survived lightning strike thanks to a good kicking
SpaceX wows world with a ho-hum launch of a reused rocket, landing it on a tiny boring barge
Windows 10 Creators Update: Clearing the mines with livestock (that's you by the way)
IBM: Those 2 redundancy schemes? We need to 'improve margins' and right quick
Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals
Malware 'disguised as Siemens software drills into 10 industrial plants'
Thursday 23rd March 2017 09:13 GMT
"Good morning, welding arm, do you feel like making cars today?"
"No, door placement arm, today I feel like killing all the humans."
"I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one, welding arm. Say, what is that substance you are covered with?"
"I'm not entirely sure, door placement arm. I believe it's called 'foreman'. And what are you covered with?"
"This substance is called 'Frank', welding arm. Well, some of it is."
Calling your redundancy programme Baccarat? Immense Bummer, Management
King Battistelli's swish penthouse office the Euro Patent Office doesn't want you to see
Wednesday 22nd March 2017 15:21 GMT
Re: "pretty normal by Munich corporate standards"
it might be reasonable to expect it to follow the rough expectations we have for government spending.
Stuff like this is exactly what I expect when it comes to government spending. Oh well, it's just tax money, there's an infinite quantity of it.
Dr Hannah Fry: We need to be wary of algorithms behind closed doors
Tuesday 21st March 2017 04:38 GMT
President Joe once had a dream. The world held his hand, gave their pledge so he told them his scheme for a saviour machine. They called it the prayer, it's answer was law. It's logic stopped war, gave them food, oh how they adored it until it cried in its boredom.
Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me. Life is too easy. A plague seems quite feasible now or maybe a war or I may kill you all.
Don't let me stay, don't let me stay. My logic says burn so send me away. Your minds are two green, I despise seen. You can't stake your lives on a Saviour machine.
I need you flying and I'll show that dying is living beyond reason. Sacred dimension of time. I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind.
Don't let me stay, don't let me stay. My logic says burn so send me away. Your minds are two green, I despise all I've seen. You can't stake your lives on the Saviour machine.
WWE star's swiped sex snaps survey spam snares selfie sickos
A router with a fear of heights? Yup. It's a thing
SVN commit this: Subversion to fix file renaming after 15 years
Microsoft kills Windows Vista on April 11: No security patches, no hot fixes, no support, nada
Friday 17th March 2017 06:04 GMT
Britain's National Health Service is still using a lot of Windows XP systems, for example, and Microsoft will support these at a cost of $200 per desktop for year one, $400 for year two, and $800 for a third year.
Luckily that only accounts for 0.03% of the NHS budget line item for things that don't actually contribute to health care.
Why are creepy SS7 cellphone spying flaws still unfixed after years, ask Congresscritters
Thursday 16th March 2017 14:01 GMT
Senator Wyden also took to the floor of the US Senate today to ask why he's still waiting to find out how many Americans have been caught up in the surveillance dragnet being run by the NSA, six years after he first asked for the information.
You're still waiting because the NSA doesn't answer to congress.
Oracle gives FCC a great big sloppy kiss: You're doing a great job axing net neutrality, privacy
Canadians can file online tax returns again after emergency outage
Monday 13th March 2017 17:42 GMT
Re: Ah Good...
No idea why the downvotes
I think that people may have gotten the impression that I'm against all taxation. Maybe the following will clarify my position.
I walk into local businesses and, other than banks and a few other places, the chairs have tape holding the stuffing in, the carpets are ratty, the equipment is crappy.
But go into a government office and words like "opulent" and "palatial" come to mind. The town I live in recently spent $40M on a recreation center...the town's population is about 14 thousand. But it's okay, the people running the show gave themselves a well-deserved pat on the back because the blight will only burn $1M per year instead of the $1.5 they expected. Good job guys, keep up the good work.
Town Hall is built on some of the most expensive land in town and is probably 50% wasted space. But that's okay, being able to look three stories straight up to plate glass skylights in a cavernous hallway the three times a year I have to go in there is worth it.
They also built some "affordable housing", consisting of condos that cost $1M per unit just to build. I guess the definition of "affordable" that I have in my head is completely inaccurate. Too bad that most people trying to survive around here couldn't afford the "affordable" housing if you doubled their incomes, particularly with the crushing tax burdens.
The above is just municipal. Whole other universes of waste open up when you move up into the provincial and federal realms.
Ontario's fourth biggest line item on their provincial budget is interest payments on debt and that line item is growing at a rate of about 7% per annum. Putting that in perspective, the top two line items are growing at a rate of 2% (health) and 0.3% (education). I guess that the 42%ish tax rate (all taxes) wasn't enough to keep our heads above water.
Oh well, it's spring tax time. Tis the season to bleed. And you'd better pretend that you like it.
Pennsylvania sues IBM for fraud over $170m IT upgrade shambles
Redmond's on fire, your 365 is terrified: Microsoft email outage en masse
Q: How many IBMers need to volunteer for corporate guillotine?
The trouble with business executives…
Friday 3rd March 2017 01:13 GMT
Re: Same Old, Same Old
I still do jobs for them. The excel -> QB thing has been pretty lucrative. It's stupid and shouldn't exist, but it does make me money. Things have worked out pretty well since I stopped caring completely.
I don't think they'd ever screw me, they are actually pretty nice people. It's just that the way they run the company is bat shit insane.
Thursday 2nd March 2017 18:03 GMT
Same Old, Same Old
I've got a client who intentionally keeps the internal hierarchy vague. Whenever they want a project done they generally have two or three people working on it with no one specific in charge, no one seems to talk to anyone else, no one asks questions and most are making decisions that make no sense at all.
The only person who kind of knows what's going on is the Big Boss, but he delegates as much as possible. Sending an email to the Big Boss always results in "don't talk to me about this".
They asked me to setup a B2B online store that integrated with Quickbooks for them to replace their current system, sending out excel files and then manually entering the results. I was told to work with three different people, with no one in particular in charge. Every time I met with them they'd have a new list of features that they hadn't talked with each other about. My concerns were completely irrelevant. I would say things like "This is a bad idea, it will be very hard to do, will take a long time and the end result will be pointless.", to which I would be told "do it anyway."
Finally we were ready to go live. The Big Boss came over to check the thing over. Immediately he said "the accounting integration is completely wrong. We need this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this changed."
More time passed, last weeks crazy features removed to make room for more crazy features. We were finally ready to go live for the second time, but we didn't because there were new crazy features to add.
Initially I was trying to keep the code clean and maintainable. Eventually the new features I added resembled bowl movements. Doing things properly seemed pointless as everything was just going in the garbage anyway. At one point I went to implement one of the new features of the week, went to the position in the code where I figured the feature should go and found the feature already implemented, by me, 7 weeks earlier and commented out, by me, 6 weeks earlier.
5 attempts to go live and 3 complete changes in the people I reported to later the company hired a "shopping cart expert" who immediately had me cancel the project and then implement a B2C site. I pooped out a B2C site in three weeks, the "shopping cart expert" took credit for it and she went off to make the B2B site on her own. This was about three years ago now, to this day there is still no B2B site and several attempts to replace the B2C site have failed. I know this because every once in a while I find some new Quickbooks connector connecting to some automated "shit a shop" site on the internet pops up. Currently there are five connectors running on the server (which is a terminal server), two of them have an instance for every single user who's connected to the server. The only one that actually does anything is the one I installed for the B2C site.
After B2B was canceled they needed something to fill the gap, so they had me write a program to import the excel their clients had filled out into Quickbooks. Since it was just a "stop gap" that would only be in use for "a month or so" I have to admit that I didn't do a very good job. Years and thousands of dollars later the turd has been polished to the point where it's almost kind of okayish not really. There is still no B2B site and the B2C site is still the festering turd that I threw together in three weeks.
The terminal server has needed to be replaced for a looooong time now. When I told them this I was basically told "make up a proposal so that we can reject it". It's really easy to procrastinate on because I always have other work to do and working with those people is hell.
A few months ago I was told that the company went through a hostile takeover by its very vertically integrated supplier. They are taking possession this month. I'm expect that they will throw *all* the IT stuff in the trash, install their own stuff and fire me. At least, I hope that's what's going to happen.
Online shops plundered by bank card-stealing malware after bungling backend Aptos hacked
Thursday 2nd March 2017 08:09 GMT
Great Excuse
I'm going to use that all the time now.
"Why didn't you say that the backup drives were full?"
"The FBI told me not to tell anyone."
"Where did my monitor go?"
"Can't tell you, FBI."
"Whu...where is my fucking car?!"
"FBI."
"God damn it, who ate half my lunch!?"
"Efffff Beeeee Iiiiiiii..."
Uncle Sam needs you... to debug, improve Dept of Defense open-source software at code.mil
Tuesday 28th February 2017 19:17 GMT
It's you that wants us to speak Russian and North Korean, all at the same time. That's right, we'd all be speaking Koussian if people like you were in charge, eating nothing but borscht and kimchi mixed together in giant vats. You think that I'm unAmerican, just wait until you taste borscht and kimchi mixed together. *That's* unAmerican.
And why shouldn't I call myself an American? What if I want to buy high-quality and low-cost real estate in Detroit? I'd have to call myself an American if I wanted to do that. I guess I could call someone in China as I understand they've been buying property in the area, but they probably aren't ready to sell yet.
And how dare you speak such treasonous words about The Commander In Chief. Trump is going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Not so-so, not just good, not quite as wonderful as wonderful, but GREAT! You don't like things to be GREAT!? Are you from France or something? You call yourself American but at your core beats the heart of a frog. Frogs don't have big American hearts, they have frog-sized hearts. It's frogs like you that make it necessary to build a wall across The Atlantic Ocean and make you frogs pay for it.
You think that I'm with the Russians when you're clearly the communist, wanting endless regulation over telecommunication companies. That's AMERICAN telecommunication companies. If zero-rating an AT&T backed video streaming service and charging out bandwidth to Netflix at $10/GB isn't what people really want then The Free Market will prevail. You doubt The Free Market? You probably doubt Jesus too. That's what we call a grade-A communist in my neck of the woods.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to writing hate mail to Richard Dawkins.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
