Re: Black magic
A Pyramid? Well, that explains how the Ancient Egyptians were able to do all those incredible astronomical calculations.
Posts by Martin
1436 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2008
Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably
Tuesday 4th May 2021 16:53 GMT
Re: Novel interference
I've had the more common variant. Down the pub for a couple of pints, then back in the office in the afternoon - and suddenly, I realize how to solve that tricky problem that's been puzzling me for the last couple of weeks. Spend the afternoon bashing out the code and getting a clean compilation. OK - great. Good afternoon's work, ready to test on Monday.
Monday. Spend the morning undoing the utter rubbish that seemed so good on Friday afternoon.
More than 1,000 humans fail to beat AI contender in top crossword battle
Monday 3rd May 2021 13:30 GMT
Re: How does a computer solve crosswords?
OK - the light has gone on for both of them! Thanks.
The first one is clever. Though I don't feel too upset I didn't get it - I think that an anagram on "Johnny rents" (or "a flat in Paris) could easily be indicated by the "out", and the fact that both "Johnny rents" and "a flat in paris" have twelve letters led me seriously astray.
The second one I really should have got. I admit I cheated - I typed the clue into Google and found "Train, or part of one (5)" - and that's basically the same clue.
Thanks very much for your help. Just confirms to me that I'm not really a crossword person. I'll stick to Sudoku - I'm good at those!
Monday 3rd May 2021 08:16 GMT
Re: How does a computer solve crosswords?
OK - I'm not an expert by any means - I can normally get about half of the Observer Everyman crossword.
But you called them entry-level, double definition clues. So I thought I'd have a chance. But I've stared at those clues and I can't make any headway.
Johnny rents out a flat in Paris! (6, 6)
I can see that's an anagram on "Johnny Rents" and the clue is "a flat in Paris" - or just possibly the other way round - but I can't get it.
Trains, whether in whole or in part (7)
Trains as in teaches, or possibly as in engines, but the other bit? Don't know.
Could you please give us a clue to the clues?
I agree - I suspect something like the Times Crossword is going to be one of the last holdouts for computer solutions.
So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!
Sunday 2nd May 2021 16:48 GMT
Meetings...
One of the best bosses I ever had used to go to meetings instead of me, to leave me to get on with actual work. I could trust him to report back accurately on any actions that I might need to know about and fight my corner to avoid actions that were not relevant to what I was doing. Also, I suspect that the meetings didn't meander all over the place when he was there instead of me.
Unfortunately, he left, and was replaced by a normal boss. But it was great while it lasted.
Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss
Korean app-maker Scatter Lab fined for using private data to create homophobic and lewd chatbot
Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this
Thursday 29th April 2021 09:43 GMT
RIP Michael Collins
I'm old enough to have never forgotten his name. It's always been Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in my head.
Here's an old song by Jethro Tull.
You want a reboot? I'll give you a reboot! Happy now?
Tuesday 20th April 2021 08:05 GMT
Re: rm -rf *
I have a suggestion to make re: that one.
I never ever type "rm -rf *"
I always go up one directory and type "rm -rf <name of directory to be deleted>"
Then, if I'm in the wrong place, I get an error saying "<directoryname not found>"
It's not foolproof - it won't save the "damn, typed that in production instead of test system" issue, but it solves a lot of silly mistakes.
Pigeon fanciers in a flap over Brexit quarantine flock-up, seek exemption from EU laws
Friday 16th April 2021 13:41 GMT
Re: Seriously?
Well its kinda like how remain supporters suddenly went quiet with the EU's recent handling of another crisis.
Brexit was a crap decision, but it's done now. There is no point keeping on about it. That's why we've gone quiet. Not because we believe that it was, after all, a good thing. It wasn't. It's a fucking disaster. But we're stuck with it.
I think it's interesting that the Brexit supporters are making such a noise about the somewhat better vaccine rollout compared to the EU. Probably because it's the first (and so far, only) advantage that could, in some ways, be considered to be an advantage of Brexit.
And the fact that we in the UK managed our vaccine rollout better than the EU is a fairly minor issue, compared to, for example, the potential return of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland caused by the fallout from our Brexit deal.
Friday 16th April 2021 13:19 GMT
Re: Seriously?
The same is going to be true for all kinds of events and the conclusion has to be that the UK government wanted it this way.
No - it's not that they wanted it this way. It's that they don't actually give a fuck about all these minor issues. They are just collateral damage, which has to be accepted, to GET BREXIT DONE.
For blinkenlights sake.... RTFM! Yes. Read The Front of the Machine
Saturday 10th April 2021 10:43 GMT
Re: Communicating with only obscenities?
In the early seventies, just before I went to uni, I did some temporary work during Easter and Summer at a large well-known photo factory.
The first job was order picking - the team was all men, and literally every other word was fucking. A typical conversation:-
Me: "Excuse me, I can't find this item - can you help me, please?"
Member of staff: "I've just fucking got to get this fucking order to the fucking desk and then I'll fucking be able to help you."
And said in a polite tone, with no malice or impatience. Eventually, I learned to filter out the f's...
The second job was in the boxing department - the team actually made the boxes that film and developing paper came in. It was all women - just four men to move pallets, and we two (male) students helping cover during holiday staff shortages. The women swore a bit (though never the f-word), but the men were nice as pie - never even a "bloody" escaped their lips. But in the changing room, where the women couldn't hear them, it was fucking this and fucking that again.
I found it fascinating that the men would NOT swear in front of women - it was considered to be utterly beyond the pale.
Prince Philip, inadvertent father of the Computer Misuse Act, dies aged 99
Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children
Friday 9th April 2021 10:32 GMT
Re: And little did they realise that they probably didn't save money on outsourcing.
...there has never been a time when there was any software without bugs...
But it used to be the case that the attitude was - yes, there are bugs, bound to be - but let's try to make sure there are as few as possible, and they are as trivial as possible.
The attitude these days seems to be meh - bugs - who cares?
This particular issue is incomprehensibly bad. To my mind, whoever designed this software and whoever let it get into production is as guilty of gross negligence as an electrician who wires up a plug wrong. They should be sacked.
Friday 9th April 2021 10:25 GMT
But the point is, that anyone with half a brain should have thought - hang on a sec, that's not going to work....
And to get round it with a manual check is just dumb.
As someone else said - why not just use the date of birth of the passengers? Come up with a lookup table of average weight vs age, do the calculation, add 10% to err on the safe side and bob's your uncle.
I mean, honestly....
Or - even better. The bags are weighed as they are checked in. Why not weigh the passengers as well, carrying their hand luggage? How long would it take? Probably no longer than the security check....
AWS straps Python support to its automated CodeGuru tool, slashes prices – just don't go over 100,000 lines
Easily distracted by too many apps, too many meetings, and too much asparagus
Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy
Friday 26th March 2021 10:19 GMT
Re: To be fair...
I have a similar problem with my wife's overlocking sewing machine. It's a bit of a sod to thread, it must be admitted - four spools, each of which has to go round EXACTLY the right path.
But I've sat and watched my wife do it, and checked what she's done, and it looks right, and it doesn't work properly. But if I do it (or my daughter does it!), it works. Well, to be fair, it works 90% of the time - the other 10% it doesn't work for me or my daughter either, and we also have to cut the threads and start again (again...)
It's got to the point that we're seriously considering upgrading to a self-threading machine...
What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose
From Maidenhead to Morocco: In a change to the scheduled programming, we bring you The On Call of Dreams
Friday 19th March 2021 17:15 GMT
Two of us once went to Milan to install some software, Went out on Friday night, expecting to need to take Saturday and Sunday to do the work and assist the users on Monday. However, we were told in no uncertain terms by the loca team that they'd work Saturday, but nothing was going to make them work on Sunday - which meant that we had to cut a few corners to get it installed on Saturday.
So on Sunday, we visited the shops and the Duomo and then in the afternoon went to the San Siro to see AC Milan stuff Perugia 4-0. It was easy to get to the San Siro - you literally looked for someone with a red and black scarf carrying a cushion in matching colours and followed them. Eventually, you were just following the crowd. It was possible to just buy a couple of tickets at the stadium for the home section. Once inside, we found out why everyone was carrying a cushion - the seats were incredibly hard !
Users were happy, too.
Friday 19th March 2021 17:00 GMT
Re: Site Installation
Many years ago (when it was still something people did) I was hitch-hiking around Switzerland. I could speak basic French, which was enough most of the time. But one guy picked me up, and we started talking in French, and I got the strong impression that he was struggling as much as I was. So I said to him "Do you speak English?" and he said with a sigh of relief "Better than I do French!" Turned out he was from Finland. He said his English was so good because he went abroad a lot and no-one in the world apart from Finns speak Finnish.
'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces
We can't avoid it any longer. Here's a story about the NFT mania... aka someone bought a JPEG for $69m in Ether
Saturday 13th March 2021 12:23 GMT
Re: Blockchain 0, Mona Lisa 1?
Honestly, I can't see any great difference between the two "items"... a thing is worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it.
Indeed.
But I have seen the original of The Empire of Light II by Rene Magritte at MoMA. It was an amazing experience, at least in my opinion - quite literally jaw-droppingly beautiful. I've got a poster of it - it's like a pale shadow of the original. I could almost imagine paying the $x million I'd need to own that (in a perfect world, where I had $x million to spare...)
I am on shakier ground when I admit that I collect first editions - where the only distinguishing factor about the books I collect is that they were part of the first print run. So what? Why does that make them particularly exciting? Well, I could try to justify it - but in the end their value comes down to collectability, scarcity and condition. But they are still physical items.
But to pay $xxx million to "own" something that literally anyone can have a precise bit-for-bit identical copy of, that literally no-one could distinguish fro the "original"??
That's just stupid. It makes no sense.
Microsoft settles £200,000+ claims against tech support scammers who ran global ripoff from cottage in Surrey
So it appears some of you really don't want us to use the word 'hacker' when we really mean 'criminal'
Tuesday 9th March 2021 14:28 GMT
Re: ...-boffin
"....to hack together generally indicates something positive and creative..."
Not to me it doesn't. You hack something together to see if it works ok. It might, possibly, be creative. But it's a hack, and has a definite transitory feel about it - it's going to be a prototype, or used just once, or just by me. It's not properly debugged or tested, it's certainly not a finished article.
It's a hack.
Just when you thought it was safe to enjoy a beer: Beware the downloaded patch applied in haste
Monday 8th March 2021 12:56 GMT
Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years
I still think that if a large company decides they want to make some cutbacks, they should send an "accidental" message to everyone in the bank. Anyone who replies to all with "Please remove me from this mailing list" or similar is put into the "at risk" group.
Monday 8th March 2021 12:51 GMT
Oh yes.
I was working for a US multinational bank, who used Lotus Notes, so it didn't affect us unduly. However, there was one small pocket of the bank who had refused to switch to Lotus Notes and insisted on using Outlook. Caused them considerable grief, and the rest of us considerable amusement.
The 40-Year-Old Version: ZX81's sleek plastic case shows no sign of middle-aged spread
While Reg readers know the difference between a true hacker and cyber-crook, for everyone else, hacking means illegal activity
Saturday 6th March 2021 11:52 GMT
The problem is that the motion is badly worded.
Hacking is not a crime, and the media should stop using hacker as a pejorative.
I agree with the first part, and disagree with the second. So how do I vote on this motion?
Hacking, in itself, is not a crime. That goes without saying, and it may well be the case that we should be fighting that particular corner.
However, hacking has always had a slight whiff of pejorative about it - from a journalist who just hacks out a few words, to a horse that is known as a hack (meaning an easy or tolerant ride), to a software engineer who hacks together a useful little script for his own use.
In a software sense, there really is is a significant difference between hacking and doing decent software engineering. The decent solution may have started out as a hack to solve a problem, and then been taken aside (by that same hacker, possibly), properly tested, debugged, and put into production with change control and everything.
Let's be fair - if you come up with a solution to a problem, and other members of your team say "Well, it works, but it's a bit of a hack, isn't it?" - you don't normally take that as a compliment.
And, plagarising myself from yesterday - if I have a piece of fragile equipment that needs to be repaired or modified, do I want someone who will meticulously unscrew everything and neatly prise off the side before carefully investigating, or do I want someone who is just going to hack into it?
That's why hacking is somewhat pejorative, and so I can't blame the media for using it in a pejorative sense.
Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative
Friday 5th March 2021 10:44 GMT
Just another thought...
Hacker just SOUNDS pejorative. It's no wonder people tend to have a negative attitude towards hackers.
If I have a piece of fragile equipment that needs to be repaired or modified, do I want someone who will meticulously unscrew everything and neatly prise off the side before carefully investigating, or do I want someone who is just going to hack into it?
Exactly. Why should software be any different?
I haven't bought new pants for years, why do I have to keep buying new PCs?
Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?
Monday 1st March 2021 12:33 GMT
We had a similar issue once at a bank I worked at. Someone managed to bluff their way into the computer room at about 6pm, switched off a server and took all the RAM out, presumbly put it into his pocket and just calmly left.
Around that time, one of the users called down to say that the server seemed to have failed - which is when the theft was discovered. It could only have been about five or ten minutes between nicking the RAM and the support guys finding the machine with the lid off - but he got clean away!
Security got tightened up at bit after that....
Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands
UK's National Cyber Security Centre sidles in to help firm behind hacked NurseryCam product secure itself
Thursday 25th February 2021 17:47 GMT
Re: "The same practice is also made in platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and GitHub"
Well, if Facebook, Twitter and Github are also storing passwords in plain text, then that's a serious concern. And if they are not storing them in plain text (which I suspect is the case), then they should expect to see a rapid "You'd better withdraw that statement forthwith" letter from three very expensive law companies.
NASA sends nuclear tank 293 million miles to Mars, misses landing spot by just five metres. Now watch its video
Forget GameStop: Keyboard warriors and electronic trading have never mixed well
Monday 22nd February 2021 18:38 GMT
Re: Shortest known period of time
Teacher:- What does the red traffic light mean?
Child: That means stop, miss.
Teacher: - And what does the green traffic light mean?
Child: That means go, miss.
Teacher: - And what does it mean when there is a red light and an amber light?
Child: That means you shout at the car ahead to get going, miss.
Cloud Direct stung for £80k in constructive dismissal lawsuit after director's 'insincere' evidence to tribunal
Monday 22nd February 2021 15:15 GMT
Perjury?
IANAL, but I believe that if you sign a statement, and then you go back on that statement in court (or an employment tribunal) you are guilty of perjury.
Normally, it's not really in the public interest to prosecute everyone that does that - but in this case, if the CEO and the chief customer officer were actually sent to prison for three months, it might send a message to other companies that, perhaps, it might be better to follow the legal procedures.
The kids are all right... for Google: Web giant talks up 40 new Chromebook models, school-focused ChromeOS
Friday 19th February 2021 08:40 GMT
Re: Take a course that's only three years
That is just incorrect.
I've just bought a refurbished Chromebook (not even a brand new one) for my daughter, which will be getting updates until at least June 2026. Or take the HP Chromebook 11a - yours for £199 from Currys. Updates until June 2028. Some Chromebooks are guaranteed updates till 2029.
I already posted this link, but if you buy a Chromebook, you should always check this page, to check just how long (at a minimum) your updates will last.
But yes - afterwards you buy a new one or install Linux on it. Or both.
Thursday 18th February 2021 19:21 GMT
Re: Planned obsolescence yet again
Though I don't disagree with you in general - you have to ask the question, how long SHOULD Google keep supporting a machine which is basically using old hardware?
People now know about the EOL date (and if you don't know, here's the page). I today just bought a new Chromebook for my daughter which will be EOL in June 2026. (And they sometimes extend the date by six months or a year.) That's probably long enough.
So it may be planned obsolescence, but at least it's a transparent date when your machine will stop getting updates, rather than what happens on phones, where they just quietly stop updating without any warning.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
