Posts by Shasta McNasty

MPs should keep their mouths shut about things they know nothing about

So a system that is driven at, or close to, full capacity every single day had a few minutes delay when an abnormal and previously unheard of scenario occurred?

This isn't the problem. The problem is that the service the system is supporting does not have any spare capacity which means every delay has a knock on effect in that flights are delayed or need to be cancelled.

No-one was killed or injured because the system went bat-shit crazy and caused planes to collide, people were just inconvenienced by a relatively minor delay.

Older systems are typically tried and tested and most faults have been found and resolved/worked around. Newer systems may be faster or have more functionality, but have a whole new legion of bugs yet to be discovered.

I vote for the slight delay with legacy hardware instead or the shiny new hardware that shits itself because flash player has been updated for the 5000th time.

The opposite of a gentle touch.

At a previous employer, someone sent a joke around to the whole project (50+ recipients) which was definitely of a NFW nature and clearly against the rules of using email.

One recipient decided to reply to the sender, including the joke in the email history and cc'd in very senior company managers. In his email he thought he was being clever and lambasted the sender for sending inappropriate jokes via email when sending those emails was clearly against company policy etc. Basically he was a knob trying to get someone in to trouble.

It all backfired when senior management fired both the original sender of the email and the knob who forwarded it to management as they had each broken the rules as both emails contained the joke.

Operation Winkle

I'm surprised some emergency hasn't happened that needed the embassy (a.k.a. flat) to be evacuated due to safety reasons, e.g fire, flood, gas leak in one of the other flats etc. Once Assange was outside and safely on the pavement he could be nicked as he'd be back on UK Territory.

I don't think people are trying hard enough.

In a nutshell

Years ago, HP lost its direction on where it wanted to go and what it wanted to make/sell.

They bought out loads of companies, drove them in to the ground and destroyed their products.

Management came and went, with the same promises made but delivering nothing but staff cuts.

Like most other Wall Street influenced companies, they had to grow every year by a large amount otherwise they weren't succeeding.

Now they're left with nothing to sell, nothing new on the horizon and a raft of incompetent off-shores and those in the twilight of their careers just wanting for retirement.

I doubt that HP will even exist in a few years time.

Here's a quick summary

Anything the UK does or does not do will be insignificant because China is destroying the planet on a far bigger scale.

But we can't be saying that in public because Cameron and Clegg want the Chinese as their new best mates.

Population Control?

The One-child policy didn't work as that just made the percentage of older people increase, so with the smog caused by the heating systems, old people have a choice - freeze to death or put the heating on and choke to death on the pollution. Meanwhile all the "important" people have air purifiers.

I think I've seen this before in some Sci-Fi b-movie.

I can't even fake the suprise

Many, many years ago, sysadmins learned not to upgrade software with the latest version as it never worked as described and would most likely break things.

Microsoft and Oracle to name just two, have a long history of releasing, poorly-written, untested, half-arsed code that royally buggers everything up without a fix being readily available.

False economics

costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds each year

Can someone explain to me how a US TV show that I might download from a torrent, watch and then delete costs the UK economy "hundreds of millions of pounds each year"?

I'm not going to buy the boxset of something I haven't seen and not all shows are shown in Europe and if they are they're sometimes many months behind.

If it wasn't available on a torrent, I just wouldn't watch it. So the money lost is zero.

Not just broadband

I have two @btinternet.com email accounts that I have used for years. Last month I got an email saying as I was no longer with BT for my broadband, I would have to pay £1.60 a month to keep them.

Normally I would just let them go, but for several reasonsit was easier to keep them so I set up a direct debit. Now today I get an email saying that BT have postponed getting rid of non-BT customers with @btinternet.com addresses for the foreseeable future. So now those who haven't paid will keep the same product I'm paying for.

...mobile apps, social media and the cloud

This pisses me right off. What exactly is "the cloud" going to do for the police?

From:

I wish I could tell you his advice was all wrong, but I can’t. Very soon after I stopped wearing makeup and started dressing more like man, I noticed a change in people’s interactions with me.

To:

I no longer hide behind khakis and polo shirts. I wear pretty shoes, paint my nails with glitter, and change my hair colour as often as Microsoft releases security patches.

So what are you saying? Is your dress code important or not? Or is it just the fact that once you prove your skills, no-one gives a chuff what you wear or what reproductive organs you have?

Or Possibly...

The GCHQ bods did indeed witness the destruction of said hardware and disk drives, but come the time when the Guardian wanted a photo of the deceased, the parts had already been binned or sold on eBay by the IT guy. Then the editor rocks up and asks for a photo of the parts. The IT guy panics, picks up some spare bits and bobs from around his desk, mangles them to bits and hopes that no-one notices the photo of completely random spares.

Is there a point in this meeting?

Given both China and the US spend a lot of their time spying on each other, would they be saying anything the other party didn't already know?

Meh

Given that:

1, Robots are nowhere near useful to the general public yet and

2, The more advanced robots are prohibitively expensive

I don't think anyone needs robot relationship analysis.

Not this again

"When HP has a smartphone, it will give a differentiated experience"

HP Execs could do with some training in Arse-Elbow Differentiation.