Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: Fundamentally Flawed Architecture

It'd be even worse for lucid sleepwalkers

I once had a whole conversation with my missus while she was asleep and she didn't remember any of it. And for months afterwards I could get away with stuff on the basis that "we discussed this last night and you agreed"..

Re: Fundamentally Flawed Architecture

If you talk in your sleep .... is Google listening?

Not in my house it's not.. Nor Apple. Nor Amazon.

A pox on all their (ioT) houses..

(It's bad enough that 7 cats and one dog are all waiting with bated breath for anything that might hint at the possibility of food..)

Re: Hmmmm

It added the concept of Manana.

Apparently, Cornish has no word to express the same sense of urgency as 'manana'..

Re: Hahahaha

Or unlock it.

Never underestimate the utility of a large brick. It's your choice whether to wrap it in a slice of lemon.

Re: I never even noticed

Chrome can consume 1GB and 10% of the CPU?

.. and tell Uncle Fester^W Google all about everything you are doing..

Re: The Need For Speed

internal network known as 'N3' (Mostly supplied/interlinked via Zen I believe)

In the days I was forced to use it (as a 3rd-party supplier) it was run by BT - with all the dysfunction that that implies[1].

If it is run by Zen nowadays that can only be an improvement. Mind you, it'll still be DHS overseeing it so some level of dysfuntional fail is inevitable.

(Oh - and as a 3rd-party supplier we were supposedly firewalled off from N3 and only the contracted ports were allowed. Except nmap proved that I had pretty much full access. And I made damn sure to have a proper frewall protecting me from N3 since they didn't even bother to filter SMB packets. The idea was that N3 was supposed to be a 'trusted' network - as if a national network connecting thousands of sites with little or no firewalling could ever be considered 'trusted').

[1] For an example, if I wanted access to another IP address or IP/port combo, I had to fill in a form. By hand. Which then had to be sent to BT. I once asked if I could fax it and was told I could. Except that the N3 admin office had no fax number.. And didn't accept submissions by email. And only had a PO box number for submissions - that had a roughly 50% loss rate. And didn't accept anything other than the original form - but yet allowed you to phone their service desk who would do changes on the fly if you gave them valid details.. One of the many, many reasons why I was happy to leave that job.

thus the fall of the USian superpower.

I once got into trouble when I worked at $LARGE_US_TELECOMS_MANUFACTURER for having a printout pinned to my cube wall[1] which had a Soviet flag at one end and a US flag at the other with the words "Two evil empires, one down, one to go" between them..

[1[ Doesn't that phrase just scream "US Corporate"?

Re: superglue the ring shut

Dude, that's a tad harsh.

Not if you went to the school that I did..

Re: Sun optical mice, circa 1985

HP provided with their Unix workstations

I only worked very briefly with HPUx and that was too long. Although, the prize for "the worst variant of unix" that I've ever used goes to AIX.

AIX is the result of an S/370 mating with a Unix box and the child inheriting all the flaws of the parents but none of the virtues.

Re: Sun optical mice, circa 1985

How many here remember the optical mice on early '80s Sun worksations?

Yup. I think I probably have a few in the garage still...

(I got given[1] a load of old Sun Sparcstation & Sun 1 stuff that the office I worked for at the time was throwing out. I've junked some but I think there's still a box of stuff in the garage..)

[1] My car got between the back door and the skip and the boot was conveniently open. I also got a small fireproof tape safe[2] at the same time on the basis that "it was missing the key and it's special type that you can't get hold of". Well, not unless you were friends with a locksmith..

[2] It's small but very, very heavy. Took 3 of us to carry it out to the car. Since our house isn't sat on a concrete raft, recovering it from the underfloor void after the floor burns out will be fun..

Re: Purchasing tractor parts last week.

every single one was indeed a complet pile o' shite

You forgot a couple of words: insecure, badly-written, confusing, fragile..

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

Keyboards these days are pretty cheap, and you're paid how much per hour?

Which was precisely my arguement with a well-paid site manager who insisted on making their own network cables.

Plus, the shop-bought ones tend to work reliably.

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

doped with Silver Nitrate to keep the livestock under control. I have no idea if it has any genuine effect in this use case though

Well - silver compounds do have an anti-bacterial action so it might. But I suspect that the bacterial load would soon overcome the action sooner or later.

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

then a quick trip through the dishwasher can work wonders

Or even a couple of minutes in the shower - anything that can dissolve the sticky gunk.

Followed by drying off in the airing cupboard (or other warm place)

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

Beer, because thankfully brewing works in spite of us filthy humans.

It even works if you don't add yeast - lots of wild yeasts in the air y'know..

(An old recipe for Elderflower Champagne^W sparkling wine doesn't use added yeast - there's enough on the flowers and in the air to do the job - results can be somewhat... inconsistent though.)

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

Alcohol any one?

Don't mind if I do. A bottle of Springbank 15-year old single malt should do it.

Re: Trackball can be worse....

I refer to mine as a dead rat.

I can offer you a variety of those - what state of decomposition do you require?

(It's the annual "rats trying to move into the garden" season. Not a career-enhancing move when said garden is home to 7 cats - at least 3 of which hunted for a living before adopting us.. And Senior Cat really, really doesn't like rats..)

Re: In the time it takes to update win-10-nic...

Wonder what happened to it.

Accountants and MBAs.

Re: I have a guess! - I'm going to say "Flying". Until it wasn't, of course.

Apparently this drone did not miss

Quick - sell the secrets to the Yanks! Their drones/pilots/tanks regularly miss - unless there's a British flag on the APC..

Re: what are they doing?

Or "accidentally" kill a sheep, and then cook it up, as soldier have done since time immemorial.

"Sorry sarge, it got in my sights just as I was firing.." (never mind that only blanks were issued and bullets don't generally leave a nice clean slash across the throat..)

Re: is there a pattern?

Weather, red dragons, software, hardware or wetwear*?

Yes.

(And wetware too..)

Re: Continually Flying over Wales

Lumps and sheep.

Or, as we used to call them "land lice".

Cos that's what they look like from above.

Re: Thinking outside the box here...

operate them in an actual war zone (as opposed to Wales)

What - Cardiff?

At least, parts of it look like it's already been hit by large amounts of ordanance..

Re: Signage

I would suggest that a part of that facelift would be the words

painted in large friendly letters on the tarmac.

In English *and* Welsh. Assuming that they don't use Google Translate to do it - in which case the Welsh version would probably end up meaning "This is land"..

Re: 'Main' base?

near Salisbury Plain, although they did a lot of training in Ascension Island on the grounds if something went wrong you'd be really unlucky to hit anything

Same applies to Salisbury Plain - apart from a bunch of old rocks that someone carelessly left in a field..

Re: Thales

decimate was to kill 1 in 10

And we all know a song about that:

"I am the one in 10, a number on-a-leee"

Re: Thales

Thales will replace the ones they crashed free of charge.

* "sure they won't"

Of course they will. Just as soon as the Government pays out the termination fee for the dead ones - a sum that just happens to match the cost of delivering a new one..

I could do this stuff for a living - or at least I could if I got rid of my morals and ethics..

(And who wouldn't want to get rid of Ethics - apart from Bluewater of course)

Re: Savings

huge future fleet of Eyes in the Sky

<Song>

I am the eye in the sky, looking at you

I can read your mind

I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools

I can cheat you blind

</Song>

Somehow, seems appropriate.

[Wanders off searching for that Cask of Amontillado at the Fall of the House of Usher]

Re: Savings

cast MoD Abbey Wood into some other dimension of time and space

Too late - it's already well established in it's own unreality zone.

Sadly, it also intersects with our reality on a regular basis - mostly to hoover up some more cash.

Re: There was something the Chinese didn't know already?

Inter-service "rivalry" prevents the Army and Marines from taking it over

But don't both of those have air arms? I know that the Marines used to..

"No General - that isn't an A-10. Honest. It's a just a modified crop-sprayer that we've repurposed as a surveilance aircraft. That big tube sticking out the front? That's a camera - go on, take a look down the barrel^w tube..

No, we honestly don't know why it went off. Must be a contact fault on the trigger. And we have plenty more generals where that one came from.."

Re: There was something the Chinese didn't know already?

so you don't have to fit cats.

Eh? What? Oh - not the feline overlords..

<Goes back to sleep^W work>

Re: Counter-terrorism police?

So this is The Sun and The Register sexing up a story.

Surely not! Not *this* wretched hive of scum and villany?

I'd believe anything of The Stun though.

Re: Its the Will of the People!!

where people rather study media studies or history instead of engineering or computer science

History is a valid subject to study - as the old saying goes "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it". And not everyone (even in IT) has the aptitude or ability to do engineering or computer science..

I agree about meeja studies though. It's a worthless[1] piece of paper that just proves that you managed to get through 3 years of university without dying or getting kicked out..

[1] And very expensive - £30k in debt for a degree that has a high rate of unemployment by graduates?

Re: Too little, too late for advertisers

outsourced their advertising on the new medium to "specialist" agencies - without realising the brand name damage that would result

Much like the current mania for having major public sites like the BBC hosting their user-facing social stuff on sewers like Facebook. Are they really happy with the reputational damamge that will inevitably be caused when the rancid droppings infesting Facebook get publically outed?