Posts by pirxhh

Reliability.

DOS has no multitasking, so any task switching is done directly under the developer's control. Same for memory management.

When your hard- and software has life or death impiications, you might want exactly that level of control.

I bought mine, with my own money, some 15 years ago after experiencing one at a client site. Still like it a lot (we also have them in the office, coincidentally).

Re: Offline systems don't need to be updated.

Unfortunately, the IFE system still needs a regulari supply of content; many passengers would not was nostalgic but angry if presented with exclusively 20-year-old fare.

Re: Go, Look, See

Oh yeah.

In prehistoric days, I once had to send someone a few countries over a fax, as I could not convey to them by phone to type //HC [Enter]. The concept of a forward slash got lost in translation for at least twenty minutes.

Re: Seen it before.

Yeah, most often it was (is?) stiction.

Had a case like this when a friend's server did not come up after a blackout.

I let the shower run for a few minutes, took the HDD to the bathroom, opened it holding my breath, turned the platter a bit and put the lid back on.

It worked long enough to recover the data.

I put my foot down when said friend wanted to reuse the disk, though.

Re: "The Register wishes you a wonderfully scary day"

Tinnitus. Because beeps.

Re: I don't get it

Stuff like this usually happens when you can't (or don't want to) accept the downtime at the time, so you leave it in until you have a maintenance window. Which does not happen until you've forgotten about the box.

Re: Rights problem

Had a very hard time once to get rid of forest-level admin rights on a customer's system.

The project was finished, hand-over done, real end users on the system... and I still had access for months. No amount of begging made them at least deactivate my account.

IIRC we had to involve legal, who wrote a polite but firm letter that we couldn't be held responsible.

I also went to a somewhat convoluted process to ensure nobody knew the password any more (recruited three coworkers, initiated password change, each typed a word, a special character, and a number without the others knowing what it was; afterwards we all signed a statement what we did).

No, the concept is that if you are effectively an employee (you have to do the task personally, the employer telling you what to do, when, and how), you should be treated as such.

In Germany, that means the employer has to deduct taxes and healthcare and social security deductions from your salary, and the employer has to pay 50% of those contributions. And you get job protection, six weeks of paid sick leave, 24 days of paid vacation per year, etc.

A self-employed person has to pay all of their taxes, helathcare, and social security contributions.

Therefore, there is a test if you qualify as sself-employed contractor. One key indicator is if you are wholly (or almost wholly) dependent on a single client; others are if you have employees, an office, do yur own sales, and others.

For the time-honored "divide and conquer" (aka binary search) method, I had built myself a female BNC terminator so I could split the bus and test both halves at the same time. Reduced the wear and tear to my pants' knees a lot.

Re: Kill Switch

Closely followed by the Maintenance Supervisor and the Camp Boss (despite the lofty title, the latter is quite low on the totem pole, but he manages all things accommodation, including the food, so there.)

That happens a lot with my mum.

So I built her a gizmo with a few colour LEDs, one each for WiFi, "the Internet" (can ping Google), our email server (port 25 responds), and her solar system's web page.

It's basically an ESP with a few LEDs from an addressable RGB light strip, all built into an IKEA picture frame that has enough space behind the actual picture plane to hide the electronics.

Now when "the WLAN does not work", I can ask "which lights are red and which are green" and save eveyone involved a lot of frustration.

Re: And the lesson we learn today is:

We had quite a number to dispose of. A coworker's wife had a pottery kiln and we just wanted to heat everything over the Curie temperature.

Went a bit overboard and melted them down into puddles while having a barbecue at their house. Enough witnesses signed a statement that the media had, indeed, been rendered unrecoverable.

Re: Been there, luckily nothing damaged

When we last moved (same building, different floor) we got boxes so we could pack stuff we wanted in a particular place. We also got bins for any crud we wanted to part with.

IT got moved by the professionals, same as anything not packed by us.

No better time than a move to organise several years of assorted stuff, with a preference for the circular file (pretty much all the important stuff had been digitised before or in the early phases of the pandemic-induced lock-downs).

Re: on the topic of dogs

Just a few weeks ago, I heard on the telly that Labs are bred to be very easily motivated by food. They lack the "I'm full" feeling, so they are always hungry, the poor sods.

This explains some of our labs antics...

Re: ?

https://discworld.com/management/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/DW-MOUSE-Death-of-Rats-2-800px.png

I still have the first edition, obtained at the Discworld Convention in Manchester IIRC.

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

Here in Germany, domestic 3 phase is common. Electric stoves are generally connected to all phases (but can run on one), larger water heaters (18 or 21 kW) almost universally are. My house gets 63 amps per phase, the most common main fuse (you have to be a licensed electrician to hange those).

It's handy when you want to install a high-powered wall box for an EV, for example.

Re: Serious OOPS!

Laptops use less power and come with built-in UPS... until the battery inevitably dies, that is.

Re: Not so much over a dispatch system, but....

Ours has a lock on the inside, like a bathroom stall. Seems to be a pretty common arrangement.

Re: Workarounds?

Nothing, really - and that's kind of the point.

Signal (the charity) can avoid complying with the regulation by not making Signal (the app) available for download in Sweden. If anyone sideloads the app, so be it.

Re: Many a decade ago ....

Just yesterday, I spent hours to re-count all the ballots at my polling station... twice. We had totaled one more vote than ballots, so we needed to find the mistake before closing up shop. Tedious work but someone has to do it... democracy doesn't come free.

Re: Multiple voltages.

You might be surprised.

I surely was when I lived in the US for half a year in 2019. I went to buy a monitor for my laptop, and most of the cheaper 22-24" jobbies at Best Buy were 115V only. Bought a HP that was both on sale and wide-range, so I could still use it after my return back to Europe. My nephew still uses it.

Re: No, I was Wrong

I have to test my real multi-gas meter quite frequently with a span ga (whenever I go offshore or on-site). It keeps me alive. No testing of an identical "test system" would do the job.

That's true whenever there's hardware involved, not just software or data.

Forklift driver Klaus

Probably this guy: https://youtu.be/TJYOkZz6Dck