Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: I thougt all these kinsds of stories were made up until a couple of weeks ago

"never argue with a fool..."

I read that as "never argue with a tool" and had to check back because my eye and brain had a quick argument about what I'd just seen and needed proof over who was right.

Re: Worst case I ever saw ...

I can't quite work out whether you were relieved or disappointed at the outcome :-)

Assuming you wanted to do the trip, maybe you should have just got the relevant people to start booking flights and hotels and waited to see what happened when the authorisations for the spend were passed up the chain :-)

Re: Too many to count

"*cool voiceover* In fact there was a cover and it was over the webcam"

Ah yes, but was it obvious and hade a mechanical slider right next to the webcam, or one of the more "clever" ones that have no physical user slider and work entirely under software control by pressing Fn+F9 or whatever?

We had a number of instances of that when we switched laptop suppliers. Luckily our first line support are pretty on the ball, picked it up and posted the fix to the support wiki. The numbers calling in dropped significantly and of those who did, it was a 5-10 second "ticket resolved" exercise which always looks good on the stats :-)

Re: Guy was an arse BUT..

On the other hand, I have met people who are brilliant in their field but can barely tie their own shoe laces :-)

I doubt this lawyer falls into that category though.

Re: Seems to me that ...

Good point. I've also seen it mooted that to qualify as a "planet" it should have "cleared it's orbit" of obvious and noticeable debris. And yet we have theories of "planets" out in the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt and even theories there are interstellar "rogue" planets that have been flung out by the gravitational wars in early forming solar systems.

So yea, round and not star pretty much does it for me too :-)

Re: GIF pronunciation controversy

I pronouce it "Graphics Interchange Format"

spoken "Giraffics Interchange Format", of course :-)

Re: Performing "Trivial" Tasks for One's Own Self-Defense

Despite what I said in my post below, yes, that's also true in some cases. One client we lease printers to, the first thing to check on rocking up is that all the paper trays are set correctly. Being multi-size trays, it's not at all unusual to find one or more with the adjustable paper guides moved out of position so the tray sensors are reporting something other than the A4 or A3 that is only ever used in them. US Letter, Legal and other weird sizes are never used at this customers sites, but the printer often think that's what's in the trays and report paper out when the only correctly set tray is empty despite there being one or two thousand sheets in the other trays :-) Of course, the "paper out" is not why we attend site, there's some other fault, but checking the tray is just "what we do" :-)

Re: Are you sure, this isn't the plot of an IT Crowd epsiode?

"(Like refilling paper in printers)."

Ha, yes! At one place a note was laminated and attached to top of the printer reminding users that if the printer reported no paper, to please put some in from the cupboard under the printer. This was met with indignation from many in the office who all claimed they did fill the paper trays. So it was demonstrated to them how many tickets were being raised, asking IT to refill them (all from only a very few people). That was met by the office manager very loudly proclaiming to all and sundry within earshot, ie the entire floor!, that if anyone was incapable of filling a printer paper tray, they could start looking for a new job ASAP. No more "please fill the printer paper tray" tickets and the sign was removed :-)

Re: Great work!

"like they could in monarchy or dictatorship countries."

You seem to be very parochial. Have you ever been outside the USA? Something you may not be aware of, but the US is one of only two countries IN THE WORLD to have not gone metric yet.

150 years as "will take two generations".

A generation in human terms is normally regarded as about 20-30 years, ie the time it takes a person to grow up and propagate the next generation and is very imprecise as a measure, worse even than converting metric to imperial :-)

Re: Re-use

"the "experienced" scientists and engineers who were successful are mostly dead now."

You almost make it sound as though NASA stopped all activities after Apollo and so no new rocket engineers and scientists ever bother to learn from and stand on the shoulders of the giants before them. I guess Space Shuttle and all the other lesser known rockets never happened in your universe? After all, those "experienced" computer scientists and engineers who built the first successful computers are mostly[*] dead now too, so who the hell built all this newfangled shit we are using to interact on this very website?

Can one actually be "mostly dead"? Shirley dead or alive is pretty much a binary thing (ignoring life support on a brain dead "patient", which is effectively dead but I suppose could be classified as "mostly dead", depending on how you define mostly since the brain only small portion of the body but, I suppose, is "mostly" what operates the body.)

Re: Clearing stage zero is again the primary aim...

"it will uck this dust into its rockets"

Rockets don't (s)uck[sic], they blow. The only input is the fuels and oxidisers pumped into them from the onboard tanks. To be able to suck in dust from the lunar surface would require the rocket engine to be redesigned as a jet engine of some some form and for the Moon to have an atmosphere.

"Despite the fact that Musk was praising European sales of his vehicles the other day, he's cut the entire market out of this product purely because he wants his toddler-sketch pedestrian slicer."

And if he tried to, it would almost certainly fail the "unfair contract" test. IANAL, but I don;t think you can put those sort re-sale restriction on products on the right-side of the pond.

On the other hand, I can sort of see his point. He doesn't want "scalpers" selling them on at inflated prices and "stealing his profits" LOL

Re: Scan the data for corruption

"not something you heard from MSM."

Is that Metro Selwyn Mayer, the not so well know Welsh film production company?

Re: Excellent!

Unless the postal vans were the largest customers of said filling stations by far, then yes, I'd agree it's an apocryphal story :-)

Re: Fun with tie-wearers

"Which he’d ignored, and used a calculator anyway…"

That's just proper paranoia. Who can tell if that spreadsheets formulae are actually producing the correct result and not shaving off some in favour of the company :-)

Re: Space Force?

I was under the impression that Space Force was already happening and had been "under construction" for some time, when Trump came along and he simply took the credit vecause the official formation of the new branch just happened to fall while he was El Presidente.

"Storing the data in the car is probably ok. At least short term. How else can it read an incoming text to you, or show you the list of most recent people you called. That data has to be stored by the infotainment system, even if that's temporarily. So in that regard, it's a necessity of function."

I'm not sure if my car stores the phone contact information long term. I can't access it if my phone is not connected. And everytime the car "sees" the phone at ignition on, it takes just as long to read all the contact info as if it's a new device. It's entirely possible all the data is there, and the new sync still has to read everything off the phone again anyway to see what have changed while disconnected. It's a 2016 mid-range model, so it's not all that "clever" anyway, it doesn't display or read SMS, it's just a hands-free calling convenience and as far as I know only reads the contact and call history lists.

Re: Old car, for the win!

Holding on to an old car might well become a financial burden and/or economically unviable as "low emission zones" proliferate. Currently, in England, many LEZes don't apply to private cars. The expanded London ULEZ does, as does the now enforced one in Glasgow, Scotland. Over time, there will be more of them, they will eventually include all types and status of vehicles and the stringency of the rules will increase. Unless you live in rural areas and never visit a large town or city, you WILL eventually have to have a newer car or pay through the nose to use it.

Re: Optional

"Guess what happens when you touch

POWER OFF."

Well, most people would take that literally. Whether it's actually the case or not is another matter. Holywood and the TV industry would have us believe one needs to take the battery out to be SURE it's off. Who is right? Can the TLAs really remotely switch-on a powered off phone or is that also just Holywood myth? :-)

"That is quite different to stating that it is actually OK."

True. On the other hand, the "injury caused" is unconsenting privacy breach, which as we all know, the US legal and executive systems are very poor at defining and implementing protection laws in virtually all jurisdictions.

Re: Why not use a satnav app?

While I agree in principle (I drive a lot and also swear by a proper SatNav), it's very much a case of horses for courses. Many people are quite happy with multi-function devices and will put up with the currently used function being interrupted by other functions or not being as good or useful as a dedicated device. Just look at most people kitchens and compare with a professional kitchen :-)