* Posts by Will Godfrey

5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: you never know when your SSD might be used in a time machine.

Not just a signed integer but a signed short integer. A standard 32bit one would be:

2,147,483,6476

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: VDU 21

I was one of the sneaky spoilsports that wrote a listing program in assembler that would do a normal list with all those codes as numbers in square brackets.

Incidentally, did you know that using the SPOOL command with a text file on disk, you could assemble 16k sideways ROM images on an ordinary BEEB

BOFH: Trying to go after IT's budget again?

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An enjoable romp

I like the umm, 'unique' take on carbon offsetting, but feel it was somehow incomplete.

That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman

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Facepalm

Never provoke a NaN

My Nan was a sweet little old lady who'd never hurt a fly. Quiet as a mouse, so much of the time you'd forget she was there. However, even in her late 90s she had near total recall of everything we said and did, right back to when we were in nappies. As I said:

Never Provoke a Nan!

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Facepalm

Re: Assume the worst

No, the poor guy has a mother-in-law

Why can't you be a nice little computer maker and just GET IN THE TRUNK, Xerox tells HP in hostile takeover alert

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Unhappy

Or they want to hide the fact they still haven't cleaned up their act.

Space-wrecks: Elon's prototype Moon ferry Starship blows its top during fuel tank test

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Coat

Gives a whole new meaning to

... put a rocket up his arse.

London cops seeking £600m mega IT contract to knock 'towers' sprawl into 'one throat to choke'

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Unhappy

Let's be rational...

Oh, wait:

It's the MET, so all bets are off.

IBM, Microsoft and Linux Foundation link arms to fight patent trolls with 'multimillion' scheme

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Meh

Wait and see

Looks, OK-ish. We'll see what the reality turns out to be.

Uncle Sam prepping order to extradite ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch from the UK

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Re: Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Small Minds

"My takewaway from this is that the UK should not extradite anyone to the US on fraud charges as they are unlikely to receive a fair trial.

FTFY

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Small Minds

Doesn't matter. A furriner embarrassed a big important American company. That's not allowed and he must suffer for it.

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

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Thumb Up

Re: Artificial Protein-Based Meat

data

5G SIM-swap attacks could be even worse for industrial IoT than now

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Unhappy

That's a lovely pyamid you've got there

But why did you balance it on its (weakest) point?

Infosec boffins pour cold water on claims Home Office Brexit app can be easily hacked

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Unhappy

Seeing as it's Government

I'd be very surprised if it wasn't as secure as an open field.

Four go wild for wasm: Corporate quartet come together to build safe WebAssembly sandbox

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Yes. That bit did seem a bit daft.

Hey, you've earned it: Huawei chucks workers a £219m bonus for tackling US blacklist

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Coat

Well the fact that they didn't, suggests they don't actually copy/steal everything from the USA ... as is frequently claimed by the country that is founded on copying/stealing from everyone else.

Uber CEO compares pedestrian death to murder of Saudi journalist, saying all should be forgiven

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Everyone likes to hate on Uber

Never been anywhere near them. Saw them as evil bastards as soon as I heard about them.

Teachers: Make your pupils' parents buy them an iPad to use at school. Oh and did you pack sunglasses for the Apple-funded jolly?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

Not just 'elsewhere'

I was quite stunned to hear that this is also happening in England... even in some primary schools.

Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular language on GitHub after JavaScript

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Linux

Re: Me too

C/C++ here, but I expect the little project I work on is far below their radar.

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Coat

Javascript

Are we still calling that a language?

I think I'd prefer Klingon

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

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FAIL

Oh yeah?

That "Lone employee" sure gets around, eh.

Not just adhesive, but alcohol-resistant adhesive: Well done, Apple. Airpods Pro repairability is a zero

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Unhappy

Not for me

The only time I want to hear any music, plays etc. is either when I'm in the car, or at home, both of which are well supplied with fixed installations. At other times I want to have all my senses attuned to the environment.

Delayed, over-budget smart meters will be helpful – when Blighty enters 'Star Trek phase'

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Happy

Re: Smart meters will ultimately lead to time of day charging

Economy 7 works very nicely for me. I won't have dodgy stuff like dryers on when I'm out, or in bed, and I've got a nice cheap rate time slot that ends at 7:30, so wash days I get up at 5:30 instead of my usual 6:00

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Angel

Re: What was that you said?

Bring it on. I'll wait a few years, then sue them for breach of contract, as they won't ever have performed any 'annual maintenance'. Could prolly work a bit of health and safety in there too.

Cringe as you read Horrible Histories: UK Banking Sector, sigh as MPs finger cloudy Big 3 as future risk

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Unhappy

Re: Not got much hope

.. which is why it will never happen.

I'm not Boeing anywhere near that: Coder whizz heads off jumbo-sized maintenance snafu

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Unhappy

Re: no airline will want to be seen buying self certified aircraft

I would like to think you are wrong Pascal.

But maybe it's better to be realistic.

UK tech freelancer numbers down for first time in 5 years since IR35 tax reforms hit public sector

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Unhappy

Story time

Someone should tell HMRC the one about the goose that laid the golden egg.

Actually, I can think of a few other groups that might benefit from it.

Steve Bannon-backed flick attempts to expose evil lurking at heart of Huawei *cough* Huaxing

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Facepalm

Hear that tinkling?

The sound of shattering egos.

Mandatory electronic prescriptions was the easy bit in NHS paperless plans

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Unhappy

Mine is half-arsed

The prescription is handled electronically between the the pharmacy and the surgery, but for renewals, I'm given a repeat form (used to be half of the prescription itself) and have to hand that in to the pharmacy next time. However, the renewal form isn't just a copy of the last one, but freshly (electronically) fetched from the surgery. Now that would be fine but for one problem. Sometimes the repeat from has items missing - not because the treatment has ended, but because someone somewhere failed to tick a box. So then I have to go to the surgery (and wait in a long queue - sometimes in the rain) to fill in a new request.

I've learned to not throw away the empty packets until I have replacements.

It then takes at least 3 days to be cleared.

Iran? More like Ivan: Brit and US spies say they can see through Turla hacking group's facade

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Unhappy

A pox on all their houses.

Even more relevant today than when the expression was first thought of.

Please excuse the license taken with the inexact quote

Don't look too closely at what is seeping out of the big Dutch pipe

Will Godfrey Silver badge

A serious question

In countries where you're not allowed to monitor employees, what happens if it's discovered that the company's servers contain material that is actually illegal in that country?

Who (if anyone) is regarded as responsible, and what are you supposed to do about it?

BOFH: The company survived the disaster recovery test. Just. The Director's car, however...

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Re: There's a solid point there too

I was with you at first.

Started to have doubts when you mentioned 'kids'.

But 'school' ? Not even the BOFH himself would try to make plans for that environment - the only one where all variables are volatile and there are no constants!

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Thumb Up

Very Thorough

The BOFH and PFY are to be congratulated on their {cough} extreme {cough} attention to detail.

Maybe they could be transferred to that long building in London alongside the Thames.

A History of (Computer) Violence: Wait. Before you whack it again, try caressing the mouse

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Angel

Re: The ways of "The Mouse" are manyfold

Very true... normally, but that rule is rescinded when said lady, supplies tea/coffee (and hobnobs) with seeming telepathic awareness of the need - all out of the company's petty cash.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Boffin

The ways of "The Mouse" are manyfold

That's just one of the ways new users are taken in by this evil entity.

About a year ago I was asked to look at a problem one of the office ladies had with the scroll wheel. It would go 'up' with no problem, but when going 'down' after a short distance the pointer stopped moving. Rather to my surprise it did behave exactly as described, so I grabbed a spare one and that behaved perfectly. The boss was quite happy to order another spare, so I took the faulty one home to examine.

I confirmed it still did this on my computer, then opened it up. At first I couldn't see the problem, but when working the wheel with the top off I spotted a tiny lump of crap moving. It turned out there was a hair wrapped round the wheel spindle which when scrolled one way, would pull this over the photodetector. This wasn't wrapped tight enough to stop the wheel moving though. As soon as you scrolled in the other direction, it would drop back out of the way.

The user was delighted to get 'her' cured mouse back.

A spot of after-hours business email does you good, apparently

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Mushroom

OFF

That's the second word. In case you need a hint the first word starts with an 'F'

Well, well, well. Fancy that. UK.gov shelves planned pr0n block

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Unhappy

As if proof were needed

They really really don't have a clue, do they?

'Technical error' threatens Vodafone customers with four-figure roaming fees

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Re: How forgiving do you have to be?

Yes, yes...

But do any have good days?

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Unhappy

Mistake?

The cynic in me wonders how much interest they made on everyone else's money while they had it.

UK govt snubs Intel, seeks second-gen AMD Epyc processors for 28PFLOPS Archer2 supercomputer

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Joke

I was thinking of buying one myself

But then I realised an 80A home supply wasn't sufficient.

No ghosts but the Holy one as vicar exorcises spooky tour from UK's most haunted village

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WTF?

Ummm

But Pluckley in Kent claims to be the country's most haunted village

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

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Happy

It's surprising how much you can convey with Hex. A friend of mine came up with this at break time:

0FF2CAFE

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Thumb Up

Re: College lab

The first one that came to mind for me too.

Oh, and the firm is still in business making very fine (and expensive) test equipment, rather belying the impression their name gives.

Experts warn UK court digitisation is moving too fast and breaking too many things

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Tip of the iceberg

With everything going on-line there will one day be total chaos when a road works gang inadvertently chops though a major fibre that wasn't seen by their old cable detector.

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

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Coat

Re: Finally forced to get a new work laptop

Am I missing something?

I thought Word always broke spectacularly.

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Unhappy

Worse than that

Confusing users by hiding file extensions, and having generic icons so they think they've got multiple copies of the same file - no wonder the poor peeps make a mess of things.

Finfisher malware authors fire off legal threats to silence German journos

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Mushroom

I know it won't happen but...

I'd like to see the courts turn this round and convict the the malware trolls of malicious and fraudulent prosecution. Also of being accessories to mass murder - 10 years for each instance, to run consecutively.

US charges Singapore coin miner with conning cloud firms out of compute time

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Linux

I know this is wrong but...

I can't help thinking there is a sort of justice to a small shark feeding off the bigger ones.

That lithium-ion battery in your phone or car? It has just won three chemists the Nobel Prize

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Exploiting science

The trick is to not do a hard cut-off at a certain age, but to ease back over a period of time, filling the 'space' with other interests until these give you too little free time to 'work'.

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

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Angel

Re: DES

But, but...

What about the beleaguered commentards who'd rather not have any Windows information at all?