Posts by Kiwi

has there ever been any situation in which it's a good thing that you or your child are 'known to the police'.

No.

The best thing to say to the police is NOTHING. Maybe except in the case of an emergency, but basically as little as possible. It's their job to get you to speak, for by speaking you give them words they can then twist to help them get another conviction.

They don't care if the person convicted is guilty, or even if a crime was committed. They just care about the conviction - enough of them and they get a healthy bonus, and hey - "everyone is guilty of something".

(El Reg, can we get a "sour grapes", "bitter pill", or "soapbox psychorant" icon please?)

Re: needing to haul together on a rope to remove a ferrous tool

Really? I've not seen a ferrous key in a long time! (not saying I disbelieve you, just that IME they're rare these days)

I have a ferrous key ring, but I don't think any of my keys are. House keys are aluminium, garage and padlock keys are something that is supposed to be brass, the bike and car keys are... [goes off hunting a magnet] - not sure what they are but not magnetic so most likely non-ferrous (unless there's a tiny amount)

[wanders off in hunt of more keys]..Ancient house key - aluminium. Pushbike pretend-lock key - oh, here's a surprise. This one actually IS ferrous.. I am quite surprised at that! Was a cheap crappy lock and I'm surprised they used something as expensive as plated steel!

Some sciencey/engineering stuff... When stuff is plated, the plating solutions can gain an amount of iron that can be transferred to the item. I had an argument with a guy where I was telling him that both zinc and copper were not magnetic, and he demonstrated some headscratchyness on my part by holding up a zinc-plated copper rod with a magnet. very simple and effective way to prove your point! But after talking to the platers, the guy showed me some markings on the hook that he said were "iron contamination", ie the zinc solution needed IIRC hydrogen peroxide (to precipitate out the iron) and filtering.

Point of the above is there may be small amounts of iron in a key that your normal household magnets won't notice but an MRI machine would have a field day with!

It is more fun if you find the 'Beware of the Cougar' sign.

Not quite there yet =>

A surprising number of downvotes.. Have one up, and one on me!

Re: Nuts

Why do you need 50,000 satellites to fix this problem when you've already got millions of guns?

Because doing anything like standing up to the government in any fashion requires getting off their copious backsides and doing something.

OTOH, letting Musk provide the links not only means that someone else is doing something and they don't have to, but if/when something goes wrong with the Starlink service it gives them something else to rant and moan about whilst still sitting in the same over-stressed armchair (he says, whilst sitting in a chair that has a couple of springs that should be replaced).

I'll also wager that, like many other products and services the world over, Starlink will be sold to us today as "very much cheaper than the others on the market, and much better", but when it comes time to buy we'll find it's barely cheaper and barely noticeable better, and that only for the first few months.

Re: Missing the point

I live in an official designated dark sky area and we have a couple of holiday cottages and on a good night you can hear the gasps through the windows as they stare gobsmacked into the sky.

One of my favourite roads is "The forgotten world highway", an sometimes-gravel road through the backblocks of the wop-wops of NZ. Not long before Whangamomona is a rest area, and on rare occasions I get to stop there at night taking someone through. It is possible to travel this road end-end without seeing another car. Aside from your own lights, it is possible to cover most of it without seeing a single artificial light (bar for satellites). There's usually a few on in Whangamomona, but that's not guaranteed.

I still get amazed by the view. But people who come from large brightly-lit cities? They've never seen anything like this!

You can see the start of the Tangarakau Gorge at 38°58'16.41" S 174°54'27.71" E. If you use Street View or similar, you can see that beautiful sign that says 'winding road next 16km" - but it is misleading as you've been on a very windy road for miles already. Also see one of my stopping points.

Years back on what we shall say was an "accidental exploration of alternative routes" I found an old timber milling camp site. Would love to find it again and spend a few nights there! But better to it this year before that musky foulness pollutes the sky :(

-->Closest we have to starry-eyed enjoyment of the starry-sky.

Universal basic income is the answer, even Nixon considered it. Here's an interesting read on the subject with it's history,

Basic income bill

Thanks very much for that. Definitely an interesting read.

Re: They toooock ewre joohbs!!!

since about the 1980's fewer and fewer people can afford to buy their first house

That is largely due to house prices which have increased by substantially more than inflation. It's a problem that needs to be solved, but is unrelated to wages.

Except it has everything to do with wages! In 1990 a friend purchased a house worth a little over $50,000 NZ. On even a 10 year mortgage he barely noticed the payments. Same house is nearly $500,000 now, but the wages have not risen to match.

Rentals are also very high. In the Hutt Valley alone it is difficult to find a 2 bedroom place for under $350/wk, and forget it for 3 or more bedrooms - generally $450+/wk for the worst places (and they get hundreds of applicants each). Yet most couples are still on less than $1000/wk between them. I know many people who have had to move in with someone else/take someone else in, and if one party leaves the other party won't have enough income to cover the rent.

There are no other options within the Wellington region, save for rare country places

and a higher percentage of people have had to give up luxuries that they had enjoyed before.

Do you have a source for that? It doesn't fit with the figures I've seen.

You didn't do much reading before posting did you? Try pretty much any newspaper, food bank, economist (yes even they sometimes get some minor stuff right), budget advisor, shop owner, supermarket owner, butcher/greengrocer, ice-cream seller... There's a lot of cheap stuff that does hide the full impact , but the information is so readily available it'd be hard not to see it.

the number of people who cannot afford basic necessities has increased.

No, it has not. Look at the OECD data.

[citation needed]

Here's one that (on a brief skim read) shows otherwise. I've just been to DDG and used the term ""number of people unable to afford basic necessities UK" and grabbed the first result. The information is NOT hard to find.

Perhaps you can provide a citation for this "OECD data" that you claim shows otherwise?

Take a look around at the % of the population who do go out for a movie/show each week (if you can find any theatres left) or even each month - the numbers have dropped considerably (the total number going may be up, but that's due to population growth NOT an overall improvement in the standard of living). The % dining out (even basics like "fish and chips" or cheap joints that claim to sell burgers).

Look at the schemes to provide food to kids in schools because the parents can't always afford to provide them with lunch. This was almost entirely unheard of in 1990 for a kid to not have lunch available, yet today it's fairly common.

Just ask anyone in their 50's whether they had a better lifestyle in 1990 than they do today, and most will say that they did

I'm in my 50s. In 1990 I had a mortgage to pay, today I do not. Even without that (I'm investing an equivalent amount of money for retirement) I have a far better standard of living than I did then.

I'm not in my 50s, and I had a much better standard of living back in the 90s, and the same can be said for most people I know even among some of the well off. I'm better today than I was in the earlier 2000s, but that's due to changing to a more relaxed job and doing 'outside work' when I can, plus some blessings that I'm afraid I can only blame God for (including things like the space, knowledge and inclination to grow veggies)

If you look at the figures back then and compare them to today you will see the big issues like not being able to save for your deposit - in the 90s I could get a mortgage with a 0% or at most 5% deposit, while also much lower prices. So a $60,000 3brm house + decent yard, 5% deposit is $3,000. Despite the lower wages at the time, I could've put away nearly $100/wk so I could easily have the deposit in a couple of years.

Today, we have a minimum of 20% deposit in NZ, and average prices around $500,000 IIRC - but will work on $400 ,000. That deposit is now $80,000. The house won't be as good, and even if I can save $400/wk it'd be nearly 4 years before I have the amount - but very few people can save $40/wk let alone $400.

Given the level of your research, and your "I'm one of the lucky ones so no one else matters" last paragraph, I'm not surprised you posted AC!

Re: IDE in servers

(you could usually manage two-channels of 2 drives each once you added a few network cards)

I remember showing a "computer expert" friend my BBS machine once.. Inside was 2x2IDE drives (2HDDs on one and 2CD drives on the other, one a 4 or 6 CD caddy), and a further 5 or 6 SCSI drives on there.

He as adamant some fakery must be going on because he'd never been introduced to SCSI and as far as he was concerned a PC could only ever manage 2 HDDs. When I started in computing he taught me all he knew.. Strangely, within a couple of months I knew far more than he did, despite his self-promotion as "one of Wellington's pre-eminent experts".

Know any good baggage handlers? I see I have some more junk to get rid of!...

Re: HOWTO Move Your Server

Solution was to replace half amp fuse with the biggest one they could find, turn the machine on and stand well back until the actual broken part began to smoke!

When I was doing my apprenticeship that was a fairly common diagnoses method.

Of course, sometimes the actual faulty part wasn't the one smoking/glowing (ever seen a tiny little signal diode handling more juice than it wants? I think I know how super-bright LEDs were invented!), but a nearby part drawing on (or in the case of a tranny, putting out) more A (or V) than was considered ideal for the circuit involved.. (And in fire-fighting parlance, some of them became "well involved").

Re: Flixborough

This can lead to some... "creative" pipe routing, requiring many more bends and supports than you might have imagined are necessary.

Thanks for the memory of one of the more dishonest times in my life :(

I often was asked to give tours of one of the plants I was at. I often suspected this was the reason why some of the piping had more bends than would be necessary.. If asked I often mumbled something about old pipework/structures/other stuff that had been there when the pipe was made but was since removed, and we'd have to shut down for a while to straighten the pipe.

At least now I can be more sure that yes, it was built in the common fashion of government-funded sites - a part of Muldoon's "think big" projects - though one not widely publicised as such.. I'll leave it to the imagination as to why it wasn't trumpeted as a government success...

Re: Frankensolutions

PHB: "Can the plant do X?"

Engineer: "MMmmmm... yes. If we can get some of that stuff over there to here. I'll just draw up the..."

PHB: "Just run the pipe from there to there and see if it works, we (i.e. YOU) can engineer in the elegant solution afterwards."

I think there's a very good chance we know some people in common.

I won't say where... There are some things that should never again see the light of day, or be mentioned in polite society or even on El Reg..

Re: I could tell a story about a machine with many SCSI-to-IDE adapters...

... but I still have nightmares thinking about it. Maybe another time....

Maybe.. But first, please have many of these -->. At least enough till the memory fades.

And then... Er, what were we talking about again???

(There's some things I just don't want to know, and if I have to squander the life savings buying someone enough booze so they forget.....)

Re: IDE not SCSI but the hack worked

Spark up said cig, heat needle and melt the offending offending plastic away.

Done that a few times :)

Also learned that the plastic covering the hole was often a thin film that could be punctured by the pin with sufficient force, maybe a little starting encouragement in the manner you describe...

--> Closest to sharp pointy things we have 'ere.

Re: Bless..

Currently having fun soldering Copper water pipes with Lead-free. Lots and lots of flux and oodles of heat from a really good quality blow torch, seems to work well...

Would that stuff ever be allowed on gas pipes?

I've used up my swear quotient for the day so I won't describe what I think of the majority of the lead-free solder I've seen (if anything earned the term 'SODder...)

When they started using it in mobos, about 2 years later we started seeing lots of failed boards where you could pin it down to a 'dry joint" in the form of a cracked joint. For whatever reason, the (IIRC zinc-based) stuff would go brittle fairly quickly, leading to failures.

Not just mobos either, but TVs, audio gear, and probably all sorts of other consumer electronics. So much stuff destined for the landfill years earlier than it should've been. Had lead solder bee used, many of these devices could've seen more than 10 years (some more than 20) of faithful service.

Given the number of components that'd have to be removed, "reflowing" was generally far more expensive than the cost of replacing.

Another ill-conceived or ill-implemented 'pollution solution' that made things worse, not better.

Re: Bless..

ALL YOUR BUM ARE BELONG TO US!

Do you know how hard I needed to fight just to limit my comment to this???

Re: Bless..

(IT'S SOLDERED GODDAMMIT NOT SODDERED.... *bloody yanks*)

Hear hear!

Re: SCSI

When all was needed was a bloody chicken sacrifice.

I presided over many a chicken sacrifice to get kit working..

Usually in the guise of "you cook me a nice roast chicken dinner while I mess around with your kit"

Re: SCSI

Basic rule - terminate at the end of the cable, not in the middle. If using resistor packs, make sure that pin1 goes in the right hole!

But what if it's easier to hold the plug upside down? Shouldn't it then go in the left hole?

Should I be saying things like this with all this talk of "termination" in the air?

Perhaps I grab my coat now.. It's the kevlar one with the cammo motif...

Re: SCSI

and use active terminators

Oh trust me.. Last time someone wanted me to install a SCSI setup using the cheapest 2nd hand no-name components he could find, I was all for "active termination".

Re: Missing Recommendation

Probably going to be tricky in these cloud based backup times.

Many of those systems at least have some level of "version history" and new versions take a bit of time to upload.

Me and my friends? Shared drives in diverse locations. When we're near each other we swap backups. Wellington could be taken out by a meteor/nuke/quake/storm etc but my data will survive - though I may not :) Several backups will disappear with anything I have local, but something of the data will remain.

Fortunately my music and movies are 'recoverable' fairly easily, my photos (and family videos) are safe in a LAS array (large-area Sneakernet) as are other stuff, and my email is "safely" ensconced in the providers' servers. I hope.

And regardless of all the noise about it, I've never actually seen anyone show any data suggesting that MS really is copying everyone's hard disks to the cloud. Even when all the "privacy invasions" are left on.

There's this site that has LOTS on articles on that you might wish to peruse. I hear they have a somewhat functional search system even that could help you find the articles on MS slurpage - tinfoil-hatter, suspected, logical and actually proven.

It's called "theregister.co.uk". An article about some winslurp borkage that meant local data/software search would not work because Bing was not reachable is a good place to start. If MS aren't slurping everything, why is the local search tied to Bing?

Re: Randomly change what's sent back ?

"Strategy." "What about it?" "Need some."

It's not so much the strategy we're lacking as the "suitable numbers of people with the will and ability to carry it out" :(

Sometimes you can't win, but you can still hold to principles and do what you can. You may only be able to do a small amount, but if you're doing it you can hold your head high. Most people don't do anything of value.

Re: Microsoft has a long history of sabotaging products which they want their customers to replace.

My (now air-gapped) Win7 dev box hasn't had this problem. I wonder if not installing last month's patches has anything to do with that?

If MS were doing this competently, they'd've set it up some time back, not on the last update.

And if MS were doing this really competently, not all machines would fail at the same time either, and perhaps not all in the same way.

Thankfully MS aren't that competent these days so probably actually a true bug... :)

knackerware updates

So... Standard behaviour for MS?

(El Reg, we need a better "bleeding obvious" icon!)

Re: This sort of issue is not thought about

Have a look around.. You'll find many pros using Linux for their day-day stuff. Film making, picture editing, publishing.. Been some interesting threads on here in recent weeks...

As to small.. The most used kernel in the world by far is "small"? Windows has the desktop, Linux has servers, phones, tablets etc.. You know, the stuff people use today..

And didn't "multimedia" die out in the mid 90s? :)

That's true if the software on the OS does not change. If there is stuff like the Adobe service that automatically updates though, or you install new applications, that is when the problems occur.

Thing is.. Much software still supported XP for years after it went EOL, and I believe there's more differences between XP & 7 there there is between 7 & 10.

This is not even a month after EOL for 7.. I honestly don't believe that there would be that much of a change in these systems...

And why is Adobe changing stuff that affects these keys (or is fixed by changing these keys)? Has Adobe actually released any updates in the last few days (if memory serves me, almost certainly yes, several gigabytes, each time, each hour, or so it seemed - been years since I've had anything more than "Elements" on a machine!)

It does not feel right that updates would be released this early that 'accidentally" cause this issue, although it is a given that both MS and Adobe have had lets just say "some rough patches" with their QC depts...

Re: Adobe Genuine Monitor Service

Thank goodness I have no Adobe software, cracked or otherwise.

The way things are going these days, I think you'd have to be pretty cracked too have Adobe software!

Re: Gobsmacked!

Nice as that would be, the problem then is the repeated testing one would have to do each and every single time the consoles were opened for repairs or maintenance of whatever is inside.

As someone who had some involvement in model boats (at a "snotty-nosed ultra-annoying spectator-only but still always-near-and-interrupting kid" level), it's trivial to seal up individual modules in their own sealed box, thus when the console is opened the only devices that would need testing are those opened.

As someone who used to work on ancient colour TVs, it's trivial to make various modules that can be absolutely sealed and unplugged as needed, for servicing/refurbishing/testing back at base. So if a certain unit becomes faulty, unplug it, toss it in the "to be fuxed¹ bin", pull one out of the "works fine" bag and plug it in.

Honda was able to make reliable connectors in the 70s and earlier that survive on trail bikes in all they go through (heat, water, dust, vibration, fuel/oil spills, bladder spills...), as was Suzuki etc etc etc... Maybe not so much Lucas but any one else could. I'm sure the airline industries can make reliable connectors that plug in with little effort and effectively clean and seal themselves.

These problems are solved already. Have been for decades. And with the "5+ 9s" and multi-million-uses-before-failure that we expect from cheap consumer devices, I'm pretty sure any manufacturer with a reasonable reputation can churn out a billion switches that'll get used millions of times a second and still outlive the aircraft designer's great-great-great-great-grandkids. Hell, I still use the clock radio I brought with half a week's paper-run money when I was a teen, although I expect if I tried to play a tape in it I'd find at least one of the belts has perished.

¹ Contraction of "Can be fixed" and "It's probably f.....", but the determination was to be made back at base.

Re: Don't underestimate

Inevitably an awful lot of users, maybe most, choose the buggerit route of using the first memorable thing that comes to mind.

Actually... For sites I doubt I'll visit much, I use whatever random stuff comes to mind so long as it meets the reqs.

If I go back, there's always the password reset option. or... Well, they can use another small boost to their "registered user" numbers.. (and why I think I may have created 20 odd facebook accounts over time - what, give them my real name??????????)