Posts by Nematode

I would have taken the approach that if something can go wrong it will, and it's impossible to say what and why it might go wrong (something odd will always happen, viz most recently a buried https setting in my browser screwed redirect on my son's website, even my hoster couldn't work it our). Old data preservation = use backups.

That'll be the whole of one of my old contract clients, a certain British oil company. I had to try really hard not to fall into the lingo.

Sorry (actually not), but as a Chemical Engineer who spent his 40+ year career designing process plants with heating, cooling and many other functions, I just can't see how we got into this mess, with local authorities of whatever shape and size being tasked with cooling these monstrosities. Surely when a company applies to use water, it knows how much and what for, and the council/whoever should simply say, no, we wouldn't cool a chemical plant / oil refinery / manufacturing plant with once-through water from the municipal supply, since it's blatantly not the purpose of water supplies to do other than sustain life and hygiene. The obvious method is closed-circuit cooling via cooling towers (though even these can need top-up due to evaporative losses) or refrigeration circuits for lower temperatures. These systems are called "Utilities" in the relevant industries and there's a whole canon of established practice which the AI companies for all their cleverness can't seem to understand how to write a prompt which gets them a sensible answer to the cooling / power requirements..

AI? What's that? /Win10

There's a human touch to public services?

Not in my experience

"To be fair to Microsoft..."

er, why?

As a contractor I was working at a major-size client where every once in a while there would be a round-robin email saying, essentially, "don't use work PCs for your own browsing". Then it would gently home in over about 4 or 5 emails, saying don't use work PCs for visiting non-work-related sites, which became don't visit inappropriate sites, which became don't visit adult sites which finally became don't visit pron sites, with all of these emails adding "or disciplinary action will be taken". Followed fairly swiftly on each clampdown (every 3 months or so) by an email saying "Today we have dismissed X number of people who were ignoring all the earlier emails". Yet very 3 months, people were still getting caught out. What part of No did they not understand?

At some point, the financial markets are going to realise they've been watching an Emperor with no clothes on. Sooner the better.

"When I was a kid..."

...we used to play football in the street, fortunately a fairly quiet street in a housing estate, early 60s. Now 60+ years later, living in rural Scotland and with a similar low level of traffic where we are (even on the local B road to Aberdeen in rush hour!) the saying we had as kids still gets trotted out when a car comes along - "What do they think this is, a ROAD?"

To my mind the Roomba and other robot cleaners are typical of today's technology - find something which you don't really NEED but big it up as something desirable and sexy. Yes, there will be people for whom these advances are helpful, the disabled for example, but by and large you may be that fool whose money has been parted from them.

If it's serious carpet/etc cleaning you need, as in there is an allergic or an asthmatic in the house, then just about ALL cleaners of whatever size and state of technology they use FAIL on the most important factor - being able to tear it down and clean it, preferably, no, compulsorily, in water. The Roomba just takes this to ridiculous extremes, tempting you to not even look at it until it gums up and stops working.

We have a huge old Bissell thing, built like a brick outhouse (and heavy :( ), takes completely apart and lets you !wash! it. When you see what comes out, you'll be asking what does your non-cleanable (e.g. Dyson, Roomba, and most others) actually DO with all that crap? The other one we have is a small battery-powered one, which we also chose for cleanability. Also because the motor and stuff, i.e. the C of G, is low down near the floor and does not have to be held up by your slowly tiring arm muscles.

Both of our machines have cyclonic first and second stages, with filter 3rd and 4th (HEPA) stages. As an engineer specialising in industrial gas/liquid/solid separation technology, cyclonic technology is often smaller, and by and large they are blockage-free, but they have a minimum particle "cut size" below which the dust will just fly through unless and until it meets a proper filter. Filters clean the air stream up well but will block and need cleaning/changing.

No Sh** Sherlock. This is news?

I knew I shouldn't have bothered with the extended updates programme.

Lotus

No-one yet has mentioned Lotus 123. I preferred it to Excel but eventually had to port everything I used to Excel. At which point (199x-ish) I discovered Excel didn't have a 2-D lookup, you had to nest formulas. M$ took years to add it (some time after Excel 2019).

And before that there was Smartware, a DOS-based suite. Had a lot of stuff in it that more "advanced" suites did't have until much later.

All just goes to show there are some seriously dumb clucks out there who believe this AI gumf they're being fed.

I love safety-critical software. Not. I'll always remember one site start-up I did where the client's functional spec., which we followed, resulted in a hugemongous-inch pipeline valve moving when it shouldn't have*.

Having decided that the client's design could therefore not be trusted after all, I did a 1-man instant on-site re-analysis of their "code" and found 3 more errors.

* Had to throw out that particular pair of shorts.

"There is nothing to stop the slop."

Rubbish. They're called "ears".

As the article points out, we've always had slop - I remember as a kid watching TOTP waiting to see if they put a decent track on (and week after week failing), ditto the Alan Freeman show (followed thankfully by Alexis Korner's blues programme. It's just worse and there's more of it now. There will always be people who just listen to any old thing but there are also always going to be people who listen out for something genuinely new and interesting. AI is by definition unoriginal, and those with any discernment will soon get bored of any AI slop which makes it through the obvious defences.

11? Talk to the hand, cos the face ain't listening.

I always come back to considering that if you have made a billion (which to make it clear is a million, then another million, and so on A THOUSAND TIMES (a U.S. billion)), under what circumstances would you need to make another thousandfold million and then another and another etc etc ad nauseam (and it is nauseous)? You can't possibly spend it, unless you start a rocket ship company when it's not really yours, is it, especially if you finance it with share values.)

If these guys were serious philanthropists then I might not be so against them, but they just hoard more and more, in shares and investments, in some sort of pi55ing contest.

One of these guys' wealth pots could do a lot to fixing the absolute 5h1thole which most of the world has become. Instead they are just amplifying the en5h1ttification of the world.

God, I'm glad I've retired and can do or not do what I want.

You couldn't make it up.

I quit VF years ago on account of poor service (and they dumped the SureSignal, vital back then if you had no signal) ad went to ..... Threeeeee! Have had pretty good service from them actually, and even the WiFi calling pretty much works. I'm sure VF can eff it up again. Trouble is, is there anyone else better to go to?! Replies on a postcard please to ...

What happens when the drumming stops?

Search the non-"AI" net for the joke about "What happens when the drumming stops?" Then ask ChatGPT: What happens when the drumming stops?

Unless it learned from my previous conversation with it, to point out it was hopeless and had no sense of humour, you'll get the same patronising guff I got, and which got mroe and more excruciatingly worse as I explained.

(just re-checked, yes it still gets it wrong)

Can I unenroll...

....from the W10 Extended Security Updates? I have this feeling that might have been a daft thing to do