Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: "the female cat people were wiped out by the Lizard People’s 5G broadcast attack in 2020"

I've seen what cats do to lizards!

We had a Siamese cat when I was younger [1] - the only prey she ever caught was a lizards tail.. She startled it while it was sunning itself on a nice warm spot (she probably wanted the warm spot too) and it dropped its tail.

She was sooo proud.

[1] She was the runt of the litter and the breeder sold her to us cheaply because "she probably won't live long". She died of cancer at 22 and, if not for the cancer, would probably have gone on a fair amount further. She was an atypical Siamese cat in that she barely had two braincells to rub together.. She grew up with the boxer dog we also got at much the same time and, when that dog went she stopped eating. So my parents got another boxer and she started eating again.

Re: Probably the future of carrier operations

something like an F-35 in the middle of a group of manned or unmanned missile platforms

I'm getting flashbacks to Eve Online here - Gallente drone-boat anyone? OK - not long on missiles (and Caldari drone capacity sucks generally) but certainly in the sense of "big momma hangs back and lets the replaceable drones in to do the killing"..

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

It's probably still sitting there 16yrs later

Many years ago I had a (standard) Amex card (it was free for a year as a corporate perk - then, at the end of the year I ditched it) and, at time of closing, there was 29p in credit on it (can't remember why). Ever since then, they have religously sent me a monthly statement showing that 29p.

I did phone them to try and get it closed but their arcane ID procedures relied on something that I'd thrown away many years ago so I couldn't authenticate myself. I bet they've spent far more on postage over the years than I ever used the card for!

Re: Robots in charge?

'You can't say "the machine told me" or "that's our procedure" and still be a professional'

Thousands+ already do, and have done for ages.

"Computer says no" has been a comedy trope for *many* years.

Until it's as simple and standardised as HyperV Failover Cluster then, I'm afraid, it's still just a tool for Linux CLI junkies

You've obviously never seen Proxmox then - does (most) of the things that you want:

Failover Clustering - yes.

Live migration - Yes.

VMs - Yes (using QEMU/KVM)

Containers - Yes.

Snapshot backups - Yes.

All managed via a web interface. If you don't want to use CLI then you don't have to (the only circomstance I've needed to use it was to unlock a VM that the backup process had locked just before the backup process itself died - a "qm unlock <vmid>" meant that the VM could be backed up again. The lock was only for backups - the VM carried on working happily).

My 2-server cluster runs 12 VMs - a mix of linux (Devuan & Debian), Windows (Server 2016 and 2019) and FreeBSD VMs. I can move VMs between the servers, can set resilience so that, if one of the servers goes down it automatically gets brought up on the other - requires ZFS shared storage) and in general, have my VMs running happily with little input from me.

It's free to install and run but, if you want support, there are graduated offerings (at graduated levels of cost!) for corporate use.

Re: Xitter has problems policing hate speech ?

“We shall realize the prophecy of Isaiah. There will no longer be stealing at your borders and your gates will be of glory. Together we will fight, together we will win.”

And one of GWB & Tony Blairs invasion of Iraq was to produce the "peace and safety" that will fortell the return of Christ. They ignored all the other stuff about not forcing prophecies and not trying to force God into action.

How's that abundant "peace and safety" working for you eh?

Re: J. Jonah Jameson laugh.gif

Thereafter a halberd or assegai is pretty low tech weapon

Especially when combined with a spear-chucker (can't remember the formal name - a long stick with a bend at the end and a notch to put the spear butt in - basically making your throwing arm a lot longer. Obviously, this doesn't apply to the halberd..)

Re: The only way ...

cyclical "downsizing", and in most cases they find out only afterwards that essential stuff isn't getting done and then have to re-hire

A good while ago, I got made redundant from a European tentacle of a US tech firm - I was a unix/network admin and got let go on the basis that "it's a network function so the guy based in California can do it".

He gave in his notice about a week later. Oh, how I laughed. By that point I had another job doing the same sort of stuff but better paid (and no need to deal with the US' chronic inability to understand European time zones - when the IT director schedules an all-hands meeting at 3:00pm California time and then whinges that none of the Europeans attended then you know there's a problem..)

Re: 1st law of thermodynamics

... and incidentally, no one can hear you scream

Heat is work and work's a curse

And all the heat in the Universe

Is gonna cooool down 'cos it can't increase

Then there'll be no more work and there'll be perfect peace

Really?

Yeah - that's entropy, man!

And all because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which lays down:

That you can't pass heat from the cooler to the hotter

Try it if you like but you far better notter

'Cos the cold in the cooler will get hotter as a ruler

'Cos the hotter body's heat will pass to the cooler

(Flanders and Swann: First And Second Law Of Thermodynamics)

finally get Assange into US court and then they find him, “not guilty.”

Like a not guilty verdict is ever going to be handed down..

(Edit: Because the US Gubbermint won't allow it..)

first page (and seemingly growing) of search results with sponsored "results" that are uniformly useless

Amazon are getting as bad - search for 'esata card' produces a list where the top two items (and a randon scattering later' are 'sponsered' items - which often have nothing to do with the search terms.

Fortunately, they still label them as sponsored so it's relatively easy to skip past them. At the moment anyway..

Re: Missing a vital component

In the US, truly unsupervised autonomous trains are mostly confined to situations where the right-of-way is completely off-limits to humans

A lot of the Docklands Light Railway in London is like that - it's a mostly-autonomous railway origally in the Canary Wharf are of London (now expanded out to cover other areas). The do have a guard on each train (grandly called a Passenger Service Agent) who can, in an emergency, unlock the panel that hides the local controls. Other than that, it's all automated.

(Fun fact - one of my brothers worked on the original GEC General Signal setup for DLR. That's all been ripped out now and was replaced by Alcatel kit (who were then bought up by Thales).

but I see no reason for me to apologise for it, I had no responsibility for it

Let's separate the facets of that:

1. An ancestor does something now regarded as reprehensible (and I suspect we'd all have to look pretty hard to find one who didn't!).

2. An apology is offered - possibly meaningless but at least acknowledges that evil was done.

3. Current person is *not* responsible for what they ancestors did - after all, it's not like they could go back in time to stop them.

I think pretty much eveyone (apart from the RWNJs) can agree to 1 and 2 (apology costs nothing!)

No. 3 is the contentious one with many pros and cons (should a company/country/family have to pay because their ancestors made a lot of money over slavery? Money that has grown over the years *because* of the money they made to start off? Or are the two things entirely separate? Should we start asking IBM to pay reparations because their machines enabled the mass-tracking of Jews for the Nazis to kill? Should we force Dow to pay reparations for Bhopal even though it wasn't them that caused the disaster?)

As with most things in life, the real answer is far more nuanced than a lot of people would prefer to think.

Re: re: IT Dept not understanding the wider business

No, often it's senior management information hiding

We used to allow remote offices a good deal of autonomy in IT terms - right up until we had a rash of office managers basically disconnecting themselves from the phone system and network..

(a phone/broadband vendor had done a presentation to the office managers forum and sold a bunch of VOIP phone switches and routers to the offices. Trouble is, they completely replaced the extant office routers which dropped the offices concerned off our MPLS network - which meant no access at all to internal systems *and* Internet. We arrived at one office after they phoned the service desk, expecting to have to commission the spare on-site router only to discover that the live router and the backup were no-where to be seen. They then had the temerity to tell us that we should work with the telecomms company to allow their routers to be added to our MPLS setup. We said no. Our ISP said no. Eventually our board said no. The offices then had to pay the telecoms company *and* our ISP to have the old routers reinstated and the PABX routed out via our MPLS rather than via the telecoms network. Oh what fun we had. And the days of the offices doing what they wanted with no reference to us got crapped on from a very great height.)

Re: Elon Musk

Then he'd strap the whole car onto another rocket and blast it towards Mars.

As long as he's still in it I'm all in favour.

Re: (1)Wait...what? and (2) Is it or isn't it?

Rarely have I seen so much FUD and just plain old lies in the FOSS world.

Except from Red Hat when talking about systemd..

The Friday before, that is...

“Get 'em out by Friday!

I've told you before, is good money gone if we let them stay

And if it isn't easy

You can squeeze a little grease and our troubles will soon run away.”

Whatever is next?

"This is an announcement from Genetic Control:

“It is my sad duty to inform you of a four-foot restriction on

Humanoid height.”

Getting into my 50s everything aches

I wish I'd got that far before they started. Turns out that developing psoriatic arthritis in my late 20's wasn't optimal. Who knew?

9 years left for me until state/work pension time. My wife can already take her work pension but, the longer she leaves it, the higher value it has when she does take it (it's a final salary pension).

People tell me that I'll be bored once I retire. I very highly doubt it.

Re: Neumann was plausibly a couple of desks short on the top floor

at least any not involving tulips or railroads

Or slavery in the South Seas..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

My car is a bit over 10 yeras old. I've had it since new

We were the third owners of the Morris Minor (build in 1966) but have easily had it the longest. Bought it 1991/2 (ish - can't remember. My wife could probably tell you the exact date).

We tend to have cars for ~10 years or so - until the cost of keeping it on the road gets bigger than the value. Since my wife is now elegible for her work pension she could nominally retire now (but we'll probably both hang on until state pension age - my work pension doesn't kick in until then anyway) we need to think about replacing our current C-HR in 4-5 years.

Everybody needs equal rights in a single democratic state

And Israeli citizens all have equal rights enshrined in law, regardless of their ethnic background.

Re: What

demonstrates that you can't trust anyone on the internet.

Indeed. For all you know, I could be a cat. Or, horror of horrors, a *dog*

Re: The last time I heard a loud noise and things were restarting...

I once had an electrician mess up the phases and he sent 380V through the customer's entire building...

At one point we had the aircon in my computer room [1] at home serviced. We were about 100 miles away in Snowdonia and my parents were house/pet sitting.

The power strips that came out the UPS were all clearly marked "UPS, computer use only" and mum quite clearly told the man that, if he needed to use a vacuum cleaner, under no circumstances was he to use *any* of the sockets in the computer room but to use the one outside the door.

We can all guess what he did.

Yup, he plugged his vac into one of the UPS strips and blew the UPS.

I got a very distressed call from my mum that everything was beeping loudly and it was driving her up the wall. Fortunately, the UPS had failed into passthrough mode so the servers were still being powered. I talked her through how to silence the alarm and then drove back home to power everything down and reset the UPS. Fortunately, the UPS, after a power-cycle, came back to life happily. Otherwise the aircon service man would have got an £800 bill for the replacement.

He claimed to have not been told. Mum claimed he had. I trusted her a hell of alot more than I trusted him - and pointed out that the UPS power strips were all labelled and he would have had to have stripped off one of the labels in order to plug his vac in.

I never used him again.

Re: "Amazon has committed to doing less of that"

If you don't like it, start a company and compete with them

Ah yes. The everlasting cry of the unrepentent capitalist. Utterly ignoring that the entrenched monopoly will do everything (legal and illegal) to prevent competition. How do you think thet they got to be a monopoly anyway?

After all, it's not like someone with £50k of savings can compete against a big company where each of their low-level lawyers get paid that a month.

Re: I wonder what crimes were being investigated?

You mean selling Budweiser, and claiming it's beer?

Budweiser *is* beer - as long as it's associated with the word "Budvar"..

The US canoe mouthwash, not so much.

Re: Countdown ..

.. for large amounts of sausages to be shipped.

[Sucks teeth]

Only barbarians cook sausages in a microwave! No delicious, cancer-causing [1] Maillard reaction! No - frying (or at the very least, baking - preferrably in a nice Yorkshire pudding batter) is the way to do it! Surprisingly, the air-fryer does a nice job with sausages..

[1] Allegedly. Feed enough mice enough of the compound and Bad Stuff (TM) will happen!

Re: Stabby stab

People are being programmed to commit spree killings so THEY can disarm the population

Conspiracy theorist much?

It's telling that in Switzerland (with similar levels of gun ownership) the levels of gun killing are a tiny fraction of those in the US.

I've got a sidearm, I can take care of myself

It's somewhat silly thinking that you carrying a handgun will protect you from somebody shooting you from a rooftop with an AR-15.. Or running you over in a car. Or throwing a bomb through your window.