Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: dd

accidentally over-writing your hard disk

Never done that either. But I have done "rm -rf / tmp" (note the space).. Back in the mid-90's, my first linux install (slackware 0.99 - labouriously downloaded by a friend at work cos he had internet and we didn't). At about 3am, all the install done, all the various /etc stuff configured (including dial-on-demand to Demon).

There was a whole heap of stuff in /tmp (this was on a 330MB ESDI drive so space was somewhat of a premium) and I wanted to clean it up. Keyboard reflex made me hit the spacebar after the /

I hit enter, gazing blankly at the screen while the rm did it's stuff. Then frantically hit CTRL-C multiple times when my tired eyes saw what I'd actually typed in.. (aided by an error message about couldn't delete a special file in /dev).

Fortunately, all the /etc stuff was intact so I could copy it all elsewhere, re-run the install then copy it back again. After I had a good sleep!

Re: Track record..

shibboleth

Ironic that that word (or at least, the differences in accent between to Israeli tribes in OT time) was used to kill the people who pronounced it wrongly..

Re: Track record..

And the next generation re-discovers Godwins Law...

It's a bit late for the eternal september..

(Odd fact - one of the neighbours has a cat that has facial/head markings that very strongly resemble the leader of a 1930's nationalist party in Germany. I started calling him Mr H. T'missus was Not Amused. He's now called (by us) Charlie after Charlie Chaplin) He's actually a really nice cat and doesn't seem to have any desire whatsoever to annex our garden..)

Re: It's that simple

Palantir outside of the Lord Of The Rings context

It wasn't good in that context either (by LOTR times anyway) given that Sauron had one and would try to brainmelt/puppet/seduce anyone else who used one..

Re: missing <sarc>?

Practices (as Data Controller of their patients' records) are the only people who can lawfully instruct their Data Processors to share that data

The online system that my GP uses for patient access to their medical data has an easy-to-find option to opt out of data sharing with non-NHS parties. In fact, the default is 'not to share' and you have to enable it to share..

(The lead GP is a tech-savvy guy - unsurprisingly I get on well with him :-) He's also a really, really good GP)

Re: Please keep going!

it won't take all that long before twitter gets blocked in the EU

It won't get blocked - it'll just be charged huge fines for every day that it doesn't clean up its act (i.e. never).

Which will hasten the end of Twitter - 3 million Euros/day isn't much in terms of Elons' wealth but it's a huge deal for Twitter.

Re: advertisers... and suppliers

Musk has started a "don't pay suppliers" push. He wants to re-negotiate contracts while brandishing a stick

Ah - a lesson from the Trump playbook.

1. Hire an independent contractor to do some work (ie replacing all the gold taps at Trump-Florida with ones painted gold cos he needs some money)

2. Contractor does the job, submits invoice.

3. Trump says "I'm not paying because you did a terrible job (ignoring the 'customer is happy' signoff that the contractor got)"

4. Contractor threatens court, Trump replies "I'm much richer than you and I'll crush you in court"

5. Small contractor swears to never do business with Trump again and tells all their friends/local newspapers/Facebook that it's too risky.

Over time, costs rise because Trump/Musk has to find new suppliers from further and further away.

Re: Twitter “poll”

"Poll" is a euphemism

Or the old English usage - to trim short

(Survived in the term 'pollarded' - used in tree surgery to describe trees with all the limbs cut off and most of the crown taken out)

Re: It makes sense for CPUs

If the functionality is already built into the device but intentionally and reversibly deactivated by the manufacturer

I have a very vague memory of IBM doing something akin to this with their mainframes - shipped with full functionality but with the features that the customer hadn't ordered turned off.

An 'upgrade' would consist of the engineer turning up and tweaking the setup to enable the feature requested. And adding a few more digits onto the monthly support cost..

Re: the end game emerges...

I'm only there to watch it burn and eat popcorn...

Hope you are not popping it over that fire - who knows what toxic stuff is in the smoke?

Re: What else can be said

shaped like a dachshund. I like it, I think it sums Space Karen up perfectly.

Oi! Our dachshund wishes to express her extreme displeasure at being used in the same sentence as Musk, let alone in a comparator!

Let's not forget - they were originally bred as hunting dogs (dach is German for badger) and the minitures were bred for going down rabbit burrows (hence the short legs, big feet and loose skin). They are terriers by nature and, the non-messed about ones, still retain that nature.

Ours is a rescue and is *very* much what a dachshund should be - feisty, fearless and owns the ground she stands on. She's bigger than a miniture but smaller than a standard. Having had a personality-vacuum of a miniture long-haired dachsund[1] in the past, this one is definately a proper dog.

[1] My wife was bought up with smooth-haired dachshunds.. her mother got the fluffy one a while after we got married, had her for a year or so then she (the MIL) died so we ended up inheriting the dog. She shared the house with 3 cats[2] and 3 other dogs (one GSD/Rottie cross[3], one Dobie/Rottie cross[4] and a staffie/JR cross[5]. The best description of that dachsund is 'meh' - I think all the inbreeding needed to fix the coat colour badly affected the nature and capabilities of the dog.

[2] The youngest of which took great delight in hunting the dachshund.. he tried that with the new one (even though the cat is 15 now) and discovered that she wasn't a pushover like the last one. He leaves her alone now.

[3] The most laid-back dog I've ever known. It took a *lot* of harassing from other dogs to get him would up.

[4] The boss. She kept the GSD-cross in order and stopped other dogs harassing him.

[5] Also inherited off the MIL. Lovely brindle - looked just like a miniture staffie. Much more staffie natured than JR.

is that it doesn't make money

It was before Musk bought it and saddled it with a $1bn/year interest bill..

Not a huge profit but still a profit. Which they could have increased by judicious and measured cuts to staff and contractors and fixing their network costs..

Instead, Musk the Pirate comes in, slashing and burning without a clue about what he's doing.

Re: Easy choice Elon

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Fuming nitric acid is better.. and, as a bonus, you can't get re-infected!

(Please don't try that at home kids..)

Re: And anyone is surprised?

To get a HDD out of many laptops requires taking it apart

I had some some fun getting some defunct laptops (no HDD or battery) out of Salzburg (we had an office there and I was bringing them back to the UK to be freshened up, rebuilt and re-deployed).

The very officious lady at outgoing passport control demanded that I boot them up (presumably to ensure that they were read computers and not bombs..). She insisted that, if I couldn't boot them up, they would be taken off me and destroyed.

I pointed out that they had no battery or HD so wouldn't be able to boot. She insisted. I suggested that, if they were going to be destroyed, I'd need her name, badge number and rank as well as a signed receipt. We would then invoice the Austrian Government for the cost of replacements..

One of her senior colleagues then had a quiet word with her. I happily signed a bit of paper (in English and German) to indicate that there were no explosives in the laptops and went on my way.

(I did have a toolkit in my luggage - but that was, by this time, already in the cargo hold. And, if I'd had to open each of the cases, I'd miss my flight and would have to spend another 8 hours in the terminal and (of course) miss my connecting flight to the UK).

Re: And anyone is surprised?

hollowed out pound coin

*Sucks teeth*..

Defacing the currency of the realm eh? Prison is too good for you!

(As a callow yoof I got severely told off by a British Transport plastic policeman[1] for putting an old penny[2] on the local train line - I wanted a nice flattened copper disc and thought it would be fun to try[3])

[1] Looks like a policeman but actually isn't. Yes, they do have some limited ability but, away from stations or rail lines, they have very, very little power. And the one that tried to stop my motorbike as I was riding past our local station nearly ended up with a road-legal, doing a legal speed 125cc learner bike (it was a long time ago) embedded in his pelvis. Lesson: don't leap out in front of a bike doing 30mph and trust that the rider has sufficient reflexes to stop. Luckily for him, I did. I also had the sense to refuse his request for my license and registration details - since I wasn't on BR property nor doing anything illegal he had precisely zero right to ask me for them. He wasn't happy but there was nothing he could do and he knew it.

[2] Big old copper coin. I think it was George VI..

[3] Don't try this kids. I'd forgotten that the line was carrying the new-fangled 125 trains that could go a good deal faster than the old DMU's..

Re: Has anyone seen my tulip bulbs? ASIDE

includes leeks and shallots

No no - leeks *are* toxic. To anyone round me if I eat them..

(which isn't likely because, gastric effects aside, I can't stand the taste. And my mother was Welsh!)

Re: Power steering

They had lower geared racks and more leverage from larger diameter steering wheels

Yup - been there, done that. My wife (who at 5 foot 2 and less than 9 stone would never describe herself as having muscles) manages to handle the Morris Minor - even with the lack of syncromesh on 1st gear..

Her joke is that the aircon control is a handle in the door that she winds a couple of times!

(The old guy that does the servicing[1] for the Morris turns up in his 1930's Austin car. Doesn't have to bother locking it - it doesn't have door locks..)

[1] I have the mechanical aptitude but not the desire..

Re: Power steering

hope I had enough momentum to get me out of the way of the other car

Ah - the famous 'deadstick' calculations - can I finish this manouver without power and without dying?

Used to do it all the time on the motorbike.

Re: Power steering

There's a reason why the steering wheel on the Morris Minor is much bigger than it needs to be - more torque!

We used to have a Citroen XM - really nice car apart from the (then) Citroen build quality (or lack thereof). It had a nice fancy hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension that, when it was working, gave a really, really nice ride.

The problem was that the component quality in the suspension was fairly dodgy, in the 18 months that we owned the car the rear ride-height adjuster/valve blew out twice. And since the suspension shared the same pneumatic reservoir as the brakes and power steering, once the ride height adjuster blew and started spraying fluid out over the road, the brake assist and power steering died fairly quickly as well.

Which leaves you trying to muscle well over a tonne of car with no power assit at all. It was pretty much impossible to turn the steering to any great degree and the brakes required my full bodyweight to actually stop the car. Fortunately, the parking brake was a manual cable-operated one (a locking foot pedal) and, luckily, neither time it blew were we doing any significant speed.

After 18 months we realised that it had spent two months of that 18 in the garage waiting for parts from France and so ended up selling it.

(Actually traded it in with the garage we bought it from - for a Rover Sterling (2.5 litre V6 Honda engine - the US equivalent was the Honda Accura[1]) - which was a reasonably nice car but the engine was ludicrously overpowered for the chassis and you could feel the car flexing if you put your foot down hard.

We've had an.. interesting car history.

[1] Remember all those early work-from-home scams that promised you could quickly buy yourself an Accura? I vaguely do..

Re: Microsoft does everything to stay out of companies

Enterprise customers are also there to be monetized

Client CALS, server CALS (one per client), CALS (or ongoing subscription costs) for each of the bits of MS software installed.

Oh yes - let's not forget the CALS for all the other various server types.

I believe it's called 'paying for the same thing three times'. Whoever came up with that idea at MS doubtless got a big fat bonus.

Re: Tacky Windows in the corporate world too?

I imagined "enterprise" versions stripped of irrelevant nonsense

You've obviously never bought Windows kit from from HP, Dell or Lenovo..

There's a reason why the supplied OS gets wiped and our base build gets applied..

Re: Tacky Windows in the corporate world too?

Experience just of the installation procedure was mired in commercial tackiness from Microsoft

I do the Mac stuff at $ORKPLACE.. (well - I do Windows stuff as well but the Mac stuff is 50% of my remit). My Windows-herding colleagues find it difficult to understand that the base OS doesn't need to be wiped to get rid of the vendor/Windows crapware - just make sure that the Macs are registered to us in ABM, the MD is online and push the power button on the Mac.

Some while later, all the base LOB apps are installed, all the profiles configured and the Mac is ready to deploy. It takes about 10% of the time that the PXE builds take on the Windows side of things.

If your company had competent IT leadership

Copious money, no real legacy applications, no interfering C** suite, etc etc.

Stuff being broken is not always the fault of the IT management - sometimes they don't have choice about how to implement stuff (or what stuff to implement).

Re: Is SNAP the next Systemd?

I found to my chagrin that in order to get SSL working, I had to install a whole SNAP subsystem

Odd that - stood up two wordpress instances recently (on Devuan) and didn't have to touch snap at all. Did you use one of the pre-packaged versions of Wordpress?