* Posts by TeeCee

9433 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

UK artists seek 'luvvie levy' on new gadgets to make up for all the media that consumers access online

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Facepalm

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I mean, apart from grey imports destroying the UK media devices business overnight...

No BS*: BT is hooking up with OneWeb to tackle UK notspots

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Meh

Re: Sincerely, Good Luck

Well yippee shit.

Mine also maxes out at the thick end of 50 and I can easily spit on the bloody cabinet out of the kitchen window.

Google creates 'optimized' Android for one smartphone — that will only be sold in India

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Meh

Oh...right...

...Jio’s own apps will be integrated...

So less 'optimized', more customised then? The only slight eyebrow-raiser is that a carrier has outsourced their encruftulation of Android to Google, rather than doing it themselves as is more usual.

I suspect the exchange of ${undisclosed_sum} was also involved here.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

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Informally.

...known formally as the backup payload computer...

That's Mr backup payload computer to you.

Cuffed: Ukraine police collar six Clop ransomware gang suspects in joint raids with South Korean cops

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Black Helicopters

What a coincidence that this should happen just after they leaked all that spyplane stuff, pissing off the west's intelligence agencies en masse in so doing.

I hate to say I told you so, but.

First rule of a successful criminal career; No matter how big, nasty and teflon-coated you think you are, never step on the toes of any agency with a black ops section...

Fancy the ultimate no-Air-outside-bnb? NASA willing to rent out ISS for two weeks

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Re: Where are they going to sleep?

Not since the ISS darts tournament last year.

$28m scores mystery bidder right to breathe same air as Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos in Blue Origin flight

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Whoever it is...

I really hope they're the sort that starts chattering at the poor bastard in the next seat as soon as the wheels leave the ground and doesn't stop until the doors are open at the end.

Indian government reverts to manual tax filings as new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

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UK too. Even funnier when you factor in that a very large number of those messes have been made by, er, Infosys.

Still, I'm sure they can prove that the system has been supplied exactly to spec and I'm also sure they'll be happy to fix itmake additional changes on a T&M basis...

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

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Meh

Re: There are two hard problems in Computer Science

I just find it hysterically ironic that it's being renamed purely because there are so many people who just have to be a dick.

Do you come from a land Down Under? Where diesel's low and techies blunder

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Alert

Re: looking at the DNS log

At one point in a place I worked, one proxy served teh hole wurld and I could see the logs.

I still have no idea why sex with donkeys is so popular in Egypt and I'm not sure that I want to find out.

Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers

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Just out of interest...

...is there any demand from art collectors for a large space stuffed full of randomartistically arranged crap?

I'm thinking that I might be able to kill two birds with one stone; Attic clearance and a new Jag.

Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page

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Facepalm

How to tell if you're stupid.

If you take nude pics of yourself, you're probably stupid (and vain).

If you keep nude pics of yourself on your phone / computer / tablet / whatever, you are definitely stupid.

And if you leave them on there when you send it in for repair, congratulations, you just made yourself the poster child for stupid.

As always I am disappointed to see the legal system reward stupidity, it just brings the idiocracy closer.

Too easy. Microsoft introduces moderation for Winget package repo after spike in bad submissions

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Facepalm

Windows Package Manager Manifest Creator.

I see you're trying to completely bollocks up a software build. Would you like help with that?

Antivirus that mines Ethereum sounds a bit wrong, right? Norton has started selling it

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Meh

I suppose that the reason they're doing this is that they're hoping that the mining function will disguise the fact that their bloatware has its clog on your machine's neck.

If a kiosk borks when nobody is using it, can it be said to have borked at all?

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McDMagnifier.exe

Ah. That'll be the thing that generates the pictures of the burgers that appear on the kiosk screen.

These are always around 20% larger than what actually turns up,

Uber drivers can now unionise after ride biz recognises GMB, one of the UK's largest trade unions

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Actually they usually do have insurance. The slight problem will be that it's probably invalid for the rather more common reason why they're likely to be bent.

The only way to make money doing that job is to run the taxilift-share 24x7 while using one account, one insurance payment, etc.

Thus the driver is quite likely not to be the guy listed on the license he's carrying or the taxi permit, just someone who looks a bit like him to a cursory inspection in a bad light.

Refurb your enthusiasm: Apple is selling an 8-year-old desktop for over £5k

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Apple is selling an 8-year-old desktop for over £5k...

Well it's obsolete, no wonder it's heavily discounted.

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

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Re: Tea

At a Swedish supplier's place, their people buggered off to discuss something and left us with tea and biscuits.

One of my colleagues held up a heart-shaped biscuit and said; "Ah. That proves that they love us."

I held up one that was a sort of extruded swirl shape, highly reminiscent of something nasty you might find on a pavement and said; "Well, what does this say about what they think of us then?".

The three of us were still howling with laughter when the suppliers returned and we couldn't tell them what was so funny.

BOFH: But we think the UK tax authorities would be VERY interested in how we used COVID support packages

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Re: It's been a while....

...and if there aren't any, add some using your tungsten stylus. Bought for the known antiviral properties of tungsten of course.

Apple is happy to diss the desktop – it knows who's got the most to lose

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Re: "Apple is, after all, the professional’s platform"

Yeah, but Mac lusers are most likely to sue if you don't pander to their delusions, so it's safer to just play along.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

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Re: Users

SCSI ribbon cables.

When ${device} fails to work, remove cable, place the business end of that connector on the desk and belt the other side with a mallet. Instant fix nine times out of ten.

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

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Actually a rather small PR mistake. To be a very big one would require that more than 0.01% of the purchasers of their products actually gave a flying fuck whether or not they were allowed to open the case.

Remember, when it comes to consumer IT products, the likes of us are the small minority and the vast majority of purchasers' knowledge of maintenance is at the level of; "Ugh, hit with rock", if they can be bothered at all.

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

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Well, that will probably do rather more for gaming GPU availability than Nvidia's efforts to nerf the things detailed elsewhere here.

Australian Federal Police hiring digital evidence retrieval specialists: Being a very good boy and paws required

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Re: Bears

Yes, but a dog will crap in a box whereas the requirement to have a large forest readily to hand at all times makes bears a problem.

Are you ready to take a stand? Flexispot E7 motorised desk should handle whatever you dump on it – but it's not cheap

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WTF?

Seriously?

Look. I know it's teh internets and every perversion is on here, but desk porn?

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If God had meant us to run for six miles he wouldn't have given us the Austin Healey 3000 MkIII.

Rapping otters and automated database knob-twiddling: An obvious combination in some universe or other

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Meh

French bank Societe Generale.

They probably like the fact that a piece of software is far less likely to take its knowledge of the IT systems, move to the trading side of the business and drop them in a huge pile of poo.

Salesforce fell over so hard today, it took out its own server status page

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Re: Business-speak I’ve missed?

Excellent. I admire the way your little rivulets of analogy combined to form a veritable ocean of truth.

Gone in 60 electrons: Digital art swaggers down the cul-de-sac of obsolescence

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Re: Tank Girl

Tank Girl's boobs and his happening to have a whale's wossanames IIRC. The combination causing death by blood starvation of the brain.

No, I didn't look that up elsewhere.

Crane horror Reg reader uses his severed finger to unlock Samsung Galaxy phone

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Re: It would have been more interesting...

I'm sure that it's very important information as it stands, if you are a zombie.

Nasdaq's 32-bit code can't handle Berkshire Hathaway's monster share price

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Better still, RPG.

That's the standard way of doing things. Huge integer, with the decimals implied by the currency.

The problem currency used to be the Turkish Lira. A million of the things bought a 5 minute taxi ride from the office to the hotel. Hotels would need to swipe my credit card several times, as both Visa and Mastercard could only handle up to a (US) billion in one transaction.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

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The problem was when people tried to write stuff that should have been considered beyond the scope of...

You can stick just about any language on the end of that. I'll kick off with C, COBOL and Java as obvious ones.

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

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Re: it looks, at first sight, as though the couple are treating this as an amicable divorce.

Must be true. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the world's top lawyers screaming as they die.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

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Cabling.

Not surprised the supervisor installed it himself. Back in the day cabling cost real money and was a black art.

Once upon a time, a contractor mate in Novell picked up a job doing the setup for a very tight-fisted bunch. He was bemoaning the fact that a) he'd been screwed on his price and b) they wouldn't pay for decent cabling. He showed me the cabling quotes and said they were going for the cheapest (thinwire ethernet - yes, that long ago).

I saw the big number at the bottom and swore. I asked if they'd like the place floodwired in Cat5 for 16Mb token-ring, with a proper cabinet and patch panel next to the server, for less money. He thought they might, but how? I pointed out that I knew what I was doing and had all the tools required.

We did it over a weekend and pocketed well over half the big number at the bottom[1] between us. No wonder there was no shortage of choice in cabling contractors, the profit margins were astronomical. One of the more profitable items was the patch cables, which I made out of left over cable and crimp-on ends (10 quid for a bag of 500). It seemed cheesy to charge per cable, but I undercut the opposition by 50%, at 10 quid a pop, to salve my conscience.

[1] Even with the higher spec kit, cards and cable than the etherstring lads. They must have been really coining it.

State of Maine lays off 15 independent consultants on $13k a month amid efforts to implement troubled Workday system

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Facepalm

"...the State's failure to provide clear direction to Workday..."

So your Business Analysis team are useless then? It's their job to find out exactly what's required and document it, after all.

Oddly enough all projects tend to go south when the BA process has been royally fucked up and an ambiguous sack of shite has been chucked into design.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

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Many years ago....

...on one of the Classic car forums, there was a post from an owner in Florida.

Not far from his house they'd built a new mall. While working out how to connect the mall slip road to the highway adjacent, one of the local road planners had a lightbulb moment and decided to try out this "Roundabout" thing he'd seen on his travels in Yurop.

Cue the installation of the only roundabout within an extraordinarily large number of miles, thus ensuring that nobody approaching it for the first time had ever seen one before.

Fortuitously, the landscaping process had provided a tree-shaded grassed area adjacent to this new-fangled road menace, handily equipped with a bench to sit on.

His favourite pastime was to wander down there with a sixpack of beer, to sit and watch the accidents.

China claims it has stolen a march on 6G with colossal patent portfolio

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Facepalm

Re: How many were actually developed

Extra! Extra! Man gets joke! Pictures at 11.

From cash machines to commercial kitchen appliances, Doom really will run on almost anything

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Coat

Re: Doom on a pregnancy test

Also, it's pointless.

DOOM has graphical displays at the bottom of the screen that tell you how seriously fucked you are, regardless of what you run it on.

Ah, you know what? Keep your crappy space station, we're gonna try to make our own, Russia tells world

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The King of Swamp Space Station.

"The third time I built a Russian space station, it collided with another spacecraft, caught fire and fell out of orbit. But the fourth one will stay up and that's what you're going to get."

Oh hello. Haven't heard much from you lately: Linux veteran Slackware rides again with a beta of version 15

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Re: one of?

Meh. Longest beard wins.

Seeing a robot dog tagging along with NYPD officers after an arrest stuns New Yorkers

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Facepalm

Re: Facial Recognition Error

Exactly. I completely fail to see the difference between arresting the wrong bloke 'cos a computer thinks he looks like the perp and arresting the wrong bloke 'cos you or a witness think he looks like the perp.

Except that some greedy git and his lawyers think they can make a shitload of publicity out of the former, in addition to the usual claim for wrongful arrest.

Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess

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Re: Vitamin C lamp?

So it sprays you with cod liver oil then?

To have one floppy failure is unlucky. To have 20 implies evil magic or a very silly user

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Many moons gone...

Got into my company car on a hot summer's day at around 40 degrees. Fished out my HP PDA to check something while operating the starter. I needed the car running to cool off as it was bloody hot in there.

The climate control agreed that it was indeed "bloody hot" and went into "everything and the kitchen sink" mode. The freezing cold gale hit the screen of the PDA in my hand and the LCD matrix disintegrated like a shattered mirror.

I tried that "eBay" thing I'd heard about and was delighted to find that I could get a whole new screen assembly from Hong Kong for about a tenner.

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

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Cheesy music.

<Gameshow host>

Aaaannnnndddd NOW it's time for Fill Your Boots.

Remember folks, the winner here is the board member who can stuff the most cash into their pockets before everyone else gets sooooooo pissed off that they get kicked out.

The clock starts.............. ONETWOTHREE NOW!

</Gameshow host>

Grab, the superapp that made Uber quit Southeast Asia, to go public through controversial 'SPAC'

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SPACs.....exist solely to raise capital through an IPO...

That's a little simplistic, the clue's in the name "Single Purpose Aquisition Company". The problem they exist to circumvent is that the rules around an IPO are quite stringent when it comes to the viability of the company being floated. Thus what you do is float a company that does nothing, the SPAC. This has books that say it has ${cash}, no liabilities and no expenses and thus easily meets the financial criteria. The SPAC then takes over the real company and as there are no pesky viability rules for takeovers, this goes through.

Presto, a dodgy, high risk business successfully floated without its murky books and iffy practices being pried into by inspectors.

The interesting thing here is that taking this approach is almost invariably more expensive than an IPO, as everyone involved takes a cut, but companies still do it. The fact that they're happy to shell out, purely to avoid proving they meet the financial criteria of the stock market, gives you a really good clue as to how sound their business actually is.

China requires 'self-correction' of monopolistic behaviour by 34 local web giants

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Meh

It still wouldn't work. The missing bit here is that "the full force of the law" does not include the company's senior exec disappearing, never to be seen again.

Amazing what good you can do as a government, if you are totalitarian fascists.

Northrop Grumman's MEV-2 gives Intelsat satellite a new lease on life until the next rescue in another five years

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Yeeeees, but.

How long before the MTBF of other componentry on the bird raises its ugly head?

Intel offers to produce car chips for automakers stalled by ongoing semiconductor supply drought

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Re: Automotive qualified parts take a long to time

You may be thinking of the aviation industry.

The auto industry new part qualification procedure is as follows:

If new_part_cost <= (old_part_cost - 50p) then bite supplier's arm off.

Facebook says dump of 533m accounts is old news. But my date of birth, name, etc haven't changed in years, Zuck

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Coat

Re: I need to look this up

You are Jesus H. Christ and ICMFP!

Scientists stumped by strange X-rays from Uranus

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You think there might be suspicious deposits around Uranus?