Posts by PB90210

But that can't be the problem... look there's a mouse, keyboard, monitor and LAN connection

Re: The Ig Nobel Committee

"A hate-filled warmongering psycho wanting a peace prize, and an anti-vax, anti-science, conspiracy-theorist in charge of health..."

Someone pointed out just the other day that the first thing they did was ditch DEI to 'ensure only the right people' got the jobs... only to fill just about every post with the least suitable candidate possible

Oh, and not forgetting his first term promise to 'drain the swamp', which he did, only to refill it with Thames Water's finest effluent...

Re: describing the allegations as "concerning."

Plus a flashing red light...

The car park always needs another speed hump!

Re: Reset Buttons

Where can you find a paper clip to reset/default that box nowadays?

Re: Parasites

After the Challenger disaster, Richard Feynman reportedly said "x million parts, all made by the lowest bidder"

(and I believe he was just paraphrasing an earlier quote)

Re: Kathy Burke said it best...

> ("Why are there 4,000,000 left boots in Maine and 4,050,000 right boots in Dakota? And why are all of them pink?")

Back in the 60s/70s the BBC had a radio show called The Men From The Ministry (forerunner of Yes Minister) and one of the first episodes involved this very thing. An army amphibious exercise delayed because of the lack of rubber boats.. hurried order raised for £5m worth of rubber boots, all left-footed

I was going to say something similar... that 90% is mostly that routine stuff you already have standard pages/forms/scripts for

Re: Never was so much measured by so few to so little effect.

Day 1 after Skype was installed I set the status message to something like "I spend a lot of time away from my desk and this may not reflect my true status"

Remained that way, through the 'upgrade' to Teams, until I retired...

Re: US Centric...stream a Cliff Richard or Des O'Connor song or two

Kelly Enema's Worlds Worst Records

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0TyOlX5Rls4

Re: Can I hear from an actual expert?

There was the problem with the Spotify/Apple/Napster(?) 'shuffle' algorithm. People complained that it couldn't be random because it just played the same artist/album/track over and over... proving it was actually (likely to be) random.

They had to turn down the randomness in order to satisfy the complaints about the lack of randomness!

Re: The Oddest Thing

He's thinking of a hypothetical waiting room where you get seen immediately and don't have time to notice the surroundings... unlike the real world where you've finished reading the stack of Punches from 1963, done the crossword in the Practical Weasel Keeper, memorised the symptoms for beri-beri in pregnant buffalo and am now counting all the drawing pins on all the noticeboards...

Re: Not just a problem with F-35

But you can't do this with an F35 because of the clause on page 94 of the T&C's... oh no, you mean you didn't read them all before you clicked 'accept'!

Re: how to tell the difference?

Something I was working on years ago came with documentation that seemed to confuse upload/download. To me it appeared to be written from the point of view of the device, so I was downloading files TO the device and uploading FROM the device to my laptop rather than vicky verky...

You missed the buttons and switches have been replaced by a few enormous chunky buttons that disappear into the dash just when you need them most. They are multifunction and changed according to some kind of unfathomable 'context'. The functions seem to be random, are actual not, but you never get to find a pattern. If you ever discover how to switch the wipers on and off you will never ever find that combination ever again, no matter how many times you try to replicate your tracks.

Oh, and everything changes after an update

Re: Openreach can't even dig a trench.

I've just had my 40yo line upgraded to digital voice and it only took just over a year!

Unknown to me, BT kept ordering it but the jobs were being cancelled by OR. Eventually they managed to cut off all phone service (no i/c or o/g calls) that took a week to report and fix. After another couple of months they finally contacted me to say the reason the repeat orders were failing was because OR couldn't find my address on the Royal Mail database (they listed floors rather than flats). "You need to get the address updated on RM".. huh! It's a 40yo phone service!

Tried RM's 'change address' service but after nothing for 3 months they finally said I needed to get the council to inform them of the 'change', so I shot back a screenshot from the council site... but no, that's not sufficient.

OR finally accepted my version of the address a couple of weeks back (when I also learned that the other flats had been accepted, despite also not appearing on the RM database) and the service was finally switched.

The only problem I found was that it comes with voicemail that I don't have the option to switch off (you can set the number of rings, but not 'off'), so I had to raise an order to cancel voicemail

Re: Placebo

I once saw a list of homeopathic remedies that included one for cancer made using cancerous cells.

Luck the remedy just uses diluted water...

Re: "I did a spot of Artexing"

I think it's probably less fashionable because of the asbestos. The popularity was more to do with the fact that it could make a Victorian ceiling look half decent with little effort

Re: Sir Brian Leveson recommends numerous uses of AI

Many a case hinges on arguments over the position of a comma, the meaning a phrase and the interpretation of a clause in some ancient statute... and that's before you throw AI hallucinations into the mix

Re: Who watches the watchers?

"it is up to the user to make sure that anyone with whom an agent is shared has access to the same source files. Otherwise, there is an even greater chance that Copilot might be confidently wrong"

But will it admit that it doesn't have access to all the info... or does it just give an answer based on the little it can see?

Don't worry, Donnie's just promised to fix the voting...

Re: How many man hours...

It's more likely to be that there was budget left over that needed to be used up before the end of the financial year... "we need a success story"

The deity tried that with Zebra fish...

Have you tried Father Ted's version of Speed, with Dougal on the milk float?

Re: What's wrong with 'The Circle Line'?

Originally clockwise and anticlockwise directions were run by different companies, so an unscrupulous ticket office could sell you a ticket only valid for a journey the long way round rather than refer you to its rival at the next window for the more direct journey

Beat me to it by mins!

Re: Typical musk

So you pay double for a robotaxi... not so much 'car sharing'...

Re: 'big beautiful ice'

And just 55 miles from Russia!

Better impose tarrifs on whoever is in charge of it!

Re: Edit.com

No no... that's just Copilot creating an editor on the fly to make you think you have some kind of control over your machine

It will even create mistakes in your code for you using the latest AI

Re: Wow

Some of those in the car parks of fast food outlets are connected using 3/4G modems.

This has the added benefit that they can easily be tracked while traveling in the bucket of a JCB at 3am.

Re: This is now not a joke

Unfortunately modem trains are packed with electronics that can occasionally need a reboot... not much fun on a tube train when you have to pray the reboot is over before the emergency lighting runs out