Will it inject
AI into the meeting?
<<spent 90 mins today sitting in on a teleconference with the boss, the beancounter and our 2nd best customer..... zzzzzzzzzzz<jog> wassat? no we cant make 20 000 by tommorrow ... zzzzzzzz
Posts by Boris the Cockroach
3427 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008
Page:
Microsoft injects AI into Teams so no one will ever forget what the meeting decided
Labyrinth of 371 legacy systems hindered hospital's IT meltdown recovery
Monday 30th January 2023 22:19 GMT 
Re: IT is a cost to be minimised
Its not just the NHS that thinks this, its everywhere
But then a lot of people dont think "How much of our business depends on the computers working correctly?"
which is how I can get chewn out for asking to book a machine tech to come in and swap out a failing HDD at a planned time, and get the answer "It has not failed yet, so we're not paying for 2 hrs of the tech's time swapping out a working HDD"............... "So we wait for an unplanned outage right when we need to use the machine urgently... then have to wait 4-6 days before the tech can come in?"
And people wonder why theres a bit of plywood in my office that says "Stress reliving tool... please punch freely"
(notes for the questing: the machines have a lot of vibration when running.... the HDDs are mounted on carriers designed to isolate them.... it doesn't always work.... and yes we're testing SSDs at the moment....)
BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was
Friday 27th January 2023 12:47 GMT 
I swear
that the BoFH has done a week coping with the folks I work with (see on call comments for more)
But while grinning my way through his tale I never lost it until "I make an mental note to change our meeting rooms so they have external windows." thats when the keyboard died.
But on the plus side, I'm ahead of el-reg's very own BoFH because our meeting room does have external windows(with a very dodgy catch)... sadly the plunge from 2 floors up is rarely fatal. Unless the PFY parks the woodchipper right below and leaves it running...
User was told three times 'Do Not Reboot This PC' – then unplugged it anyway
Friday 27th January 2023 12:36 GMT 
No surprise here
Ever since painting the work trays with an arrow and putting a sign on them saying 'load this way round'... then having to retrieve said work tray because the numpty loaded it the wrong way round....
Anyway... on the subject of turning stuff off.... I needed to back up a machine's HDD so plug the network patch lead into the network port... start the d/l on the laptop and hang a sign saying "Do not power down this machine until I give the OK"
Said user did not power that machine down... good for him.... nope he pressed the main power breaker switch for that factory unit and powered everything down.....
Techies ask PM to 'prepare UK chip strategy as a matter of urgency'
Thursday 26th January 2023 22:11 GMT
Re: Boondoggle
You're forgetting that by the time it becomes a massive failure/cock-up, the tories will have been booted from power and replaced by labour...
So the daily wails headline will lead something along the lines of
"Labour cocks up Rishi's great plan" followed by 14 pages saying how badly labour sucks in comparsion to the glorious patriotic tory party that puts britains interests first
Although lets face it... if the tory party came up with a policy of shooting everyone unemployed , the daily wail would be printing how wonderful this new policy is
Google institutional investor calls for wider cuts: 30k jobs
Wednesday 25th January 2023 20:39 GMT
Re: 50% not needed...
Quote
Most productive developers I know would be seen as "slacking" whole day. Browsing el Reg, Reddit, Instagram, reading random articles, even playing games while their brain is piecing all the work together in the background, typically in non linear fashion. When they are ready, they stop what they are doing and type stuff in.
Yeah we know all about the slacking off and playing games... shop floor cricket is our current favourite.
You get a big ball of brown sticky parcel tape off some of the supplier's boxes, then someone bowls it at the batter, if it makes it to the far end of the main gangway, thats 4 runs, over cell #7, thats 6 runs, and through the boss's window is known as an own goal. at which point the command is 'scatter' and the slowest is declared 'loser' (also has a fair chance of being fired).
World of Warcraft Classic lead dev resigns to protest 'stack ranking'
Wednesday 25th January 2023 18:15 GMT
ahhh stack rankings
or a variant thereof
The gentle art of fucking your business up so badly only the dire and the power hungry end up working for you....... neither of which are particually good.
If you're above average in an excellent team you'll get the boot(or 'training' then the boot)
If you're below average in a dire team, you'll get a bonus.
That works wonders for employee morale.... and the job search people... so all you'll end up with is the dire teams where someone can look good for being below average.
And then when the smelly stuff hits the fan, your employees dont have the skills or talent to respond and your company goes ka-boom.
While across the street, where all your good employees have gone, is booming , while the staff lean out of the windows pointing and going 'ha-ha'
Been there , done that, glad I work somewhere that does'nt use stack ranking
It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system
Sunday 22nd January 2023 16:27 GMT
You think america is
stupid.
New technical whizz starts in a factory i'm employed* at
Get handed a new die tool design, lovingly drawn out in metric by the customer, but our whizzo man has heard about some of the guys needing imperial measurements.... so he gets fresh paper and draws out the part in imperial, its checked and sent for manufacture...... to my department of high end computer controlled machining......where.... we work in metric............. and our measuring gear is in metric..... and the inspection recording sheet is in imperial because 'its an imperial drawing'
A brief meeting with the manager resulted where I explained the situation without shouting too much** and after a mangler meeting , we were told that the original metric drawing wasn't approved for production because it hadn't been checked.
*paid to have a nervous breakdown more like
**although the swearing was quite impressive
Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs
Sunday 22nd January 2023 01:28 GMT
Its because
their software/updates are cack
I've used windows all the way back to win95 (.dll hell anyone? been there, done that, wasted a day re-installing windows)
By managing to get themselves on 90%+ of PCs (by fair means and foul) their attitude to quality is "Who cares? its not like they have a choice now is it" after all its now got to the situation where no one gets sacked for buying m$.
And its a time consuming PITA to have to keep updating windows, especially when it locks you out of your PC because the update is taking 6 hrs to complete and you turned your PC on at 9am to get a day's work done (been there done that one too and had to fend off a screaming boss at the same time) and just how much time is wasted by everyone because of a m$ foul up(bet they'd change their tune if we all billed them for the time)
The best thing that should have happened to m$ is that the OS and application divisions should have been split off from each other and made individual companies... that way we could have had office that ran on linux.. with the result that people would buy the best OS rather than whatever shitpile m$ has forced on us.
And I'm dreaming of the day our CAD software gets a linux version.... we're be off m$ faster than you'd expect
As for home.... I use win10 at home....but only for playing games.. work is done on the Linux dual boot which hardly ever gets put into win10 because IT TAKES TOO F'ING LONG TO UPDATE EVERY TIME I BOOT IT<thinks about that baseball bat>
Saturday 21st January 2023 16:42 GMT 
I suspect
theres a couple of things here
1. its looking for old copies of office with the idea of spamming you with "Subscribe to 363&3/4 office" ads
2. Its looking for old copies of office licence keys that are invalid/duplicates/not paid for............. and then it will disable office on that machine.
Looking for libre office or versions thereof so to spam you with office 362&5/8 ads.... you never know but I doubt it
Wonder what happens when its run on a Linux box?
Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss
Saturday 21st January 2023 16:47 GMT
Re: IF I wanted
No.... several things I use at work are an extremely sarcastic wit, a cattle prod and a Thor number 2 copper/hide mallet(thrown usually.. as the victim as run out of range of the cattle prod)
I'm not allowed to make solutions any more.... not since the day someone dropped the laptop into one of the chemical treatment baths.. and then made to retrieve it...
Friday 20th January 2023 15:52 GMT 
IF I wanted
to kill my colleagues, there are far quicker, simpler, cheaper, more reliable and more denailable options than feeding them too much cake.
An open window perhaps.... next to the spot where the carpet is'nt nailed down properly (I needed some nails for another project)
Or that faulty lift shaft door when everyone is in a rush to get home ( what fun someone can get upto with a nail shorting the door switch)
Or the smoking shed in the car park.. that somehow got full of petrol fumes.....(amazing things nails)
Although I am saving the best until last...... this years easter decorations will involve our cheif mangler....(and some nails)
<<<off to the pub after reading far too much BoFH for his own good
New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong
Friday 20th January 2023 15:37 GMT
Why does
this story sound so much like 4 jobs(and 20yrs) ago, where they hired super whizzy mangler whose bright idea was speed everything up in order to make more money
Sadly ended badly as increased wear to the tooling caused a great deal of delays.. hey ho
And as for the quiet quitting... good luck on that
I've been doing that most of the morning where I suppossed to poking around with the CAD system on some aerospace BS, but I'm investigating booby trapping Mr Blobby (a big lump of blue tack I found in the opposite desk) because I'd fed up with, having made him back to a human figure, that someone comes along and squishes him again.
I'm considering a couple of nails up his legs.. but how long to I make the nails......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcvgpNFynVo
Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff
Wednesday 18th January 2023 17:42 GMT
Re: Any of these in QA?
And theres no chance of the UI design team being sacked
Although they are actually quite cheap to employ.... box full of crayons, some paper, and some decent care nurses.
What about marketing? surely now that win updates itself regardless of the users intentions, they dont need a marketing department....
UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail
Wednesday 18th January 2023 12:52 GMT
Loss of money here
especially for Heathrow as all social media execs now book their trips to/from/around europe to avoid landing in the UK.
More seriously, it wont be the 'metatwitter' CEO that will be jailed as he'll be able to afford an army of lawyers and issue appeal after appeal even if convicted.
It will be the people running much smaller 'social media' outfits that will fall into this law.
And most importantly, the age verification system* , it will become the most hackable target in the entire internet ,even more so than the pentagon's UFO section.
Not for the credit card information, but the names and addresses of the people using it.
"Ahhh have I reached the office of Sir Talbot bottomly, minister of defence affairs, am I speaking to Sir Talbot? I am.. good ... I have information you've been using the age verification system... and only people looking at dodgy porn site use that .. right.... make sure you speak out about not sending any more stuff to the Ukraine and we'll forget this call...... and if you dont do it... well the tabloid newspapers will love this sort of thing 'request for verification from www.poodles_in_lace.com' so we all good about that... goodbye... nice to talk to you"
*and bypassed by 12 year old Jonny stealing his dad's credit card....
Wyoming's would-be ban on sale of electric vehicles veers off road
Tuesday 17th January 2023 22:27 GMT
Re: 52nd in population - they just want attention
But at time the difference between rural and city was alot lot less and there were only 13 states to deal with.
But now you have Wyoming having the same power in the Senate as California, despite the fact theres 1/2 a million people in Wyoming and 50 million in Cali.....
Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT
Tuesday 17th January 2023 22:07 GMT
Re: "...rewriting Active Directory in FORTH under VMS..."
God thats troll bait if ever I saw it
I find it much easier to program using OO because I only have to define the interface to the class and let class worry about whats going on inside.
Which makes it much easier to create/debug/improve the guts of the class so long as it still uses the same interface, plus makes extending the classes a doddle if you need to add various functions to vary the behaviour of the class
Eg
I define a RS232 output class, it gets the data stream and fires it out through the RS232, then extend that into Seimens class which defines the data stream/setup to cope with Seimens controls, or a Fanuc class which defines the data stream/setup somewhat differently.
Of course I could build each one as an individual module but using inheritance makes life so much easier. especially when you find another bug in the RS232 class.
But like any programing technique, it depends on the problem you are trying to solve
Monday 16th January 2023 19:04 GMT
I'm all in favour
Of fresh grads , ink still dripping from the degree, being thrown alive into somewhere with industrial process controls from the 1970's/1980's
The controls have not been replaced or upgraded since installation, because A they work and B it would cost 200 million to convert the plant and sensor system into something more modern (thats 1 million for the computering tech plus sensors and 199 million for 6 months lost production) and their job would be mantaining said equipment so it didn't fall over or stop production
So for us down in the industrial/manufacturing park a 5 year lifespan for a machine or operating system is laughable when we look for a min 10 year lifespan and hopefully much longer, but we need the skills to keep them going (which involves never attatching windows powered equipment to the internet.... )
Apple just cut Tim Cook's pay by 40%. How ever will he get by on that $50m?
Saturday 14th January 2023 16:09 GMT
Quote
"But there are a limited number of people who are capable of being a CEO and even fewer who have the knowledge and experience of Apple that Mr Cook does. His impact on the business is probably far reaching and there is quite a lot of need to encourage him to stay."
And no shortage of deputy CEO's who'll jump in when Mr Cook finally gets sick of the job( and the constantly telling the press office not to talk to el-reg when it calls up)
Setting a maximum multiplier of the lowest paid in an organisation would seem the best way to approach the problem... but then we're up against the idea of paying CEOs in shares/options to avoid that ratio with the result that many C level execs view the share price of the company over any good leadership of said company.
BOFH: It's 4ft tall, heavyset, has optional fax. No they didn't take the toner!
Friday 13th January 2023 14:56 GMT
Very
grin worthy... and I've taken notes on my phone for later use... and diverted my attention while in a group meeting with the beancounter.... gawd does he drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on I think he was the doner for the first personality transplant.
I've got the PFY to thank for this, with her constant "you're getting old" line fed to the boss, so the boss thought it a good idea for me to sit in on the friday meeting with him, the line manager, the office admin , our QA guy and the aforementioned beancounter.
I'm thinking he was hoping that I'd get so fed up I'd leap up and strangle the beancounter... but of course reading the BoFH has given me better ideas.
Anyone know where I can get hold of a 1/4 ton printer, some tarmac paint to move a parking spot, an open window, and an 5 storey office building with 6 attatched factory units we can move to.......
3 minutes to Beer o'clock.....
Amazon's attempt to crush New York union slapped down
Friday 13th January 2023 00:56 GMT
Re: I don't get it
Its because the media belittle the unions as
"Fat lazy union bosses skimming money off your hard earned wages" or some other daily wail type tripe.
Although some anti-union people coming out with that sort of tripe dont like being confronted with "these fat cat union bosses still take 30 yrs or so to earn what the CEOs they are negotiating with earn in a year"
Space startup ABL emulates Virgin Orbit failure by crashing
FAA grounds all US departures after NOTAM goes down
This is the end, Windows 7 and 8 friends: Microsoft drops support this week
Tuesday 10th January 2023 22:39 GMT
Win 7
died a long time ago for me
Thats when its HDD died destroying the OS in the process..
Fitted the machine with another HDD and hit 'install win 10' since I have a valid win 7 key still..
God what a waste of time..... spends anywhere between 40 mins and 90 mins thrashing the HDD to death doing god knows what before it will allow you to actually use the machine.
And thats when I found the GParted live USB, and the mint live USB.
And its a happy dual booter now and although mint boots rather slowly for my taste(about 2 mins to the desktop), at least I can use MY computer for doing computery type stuff while win 10 might be booted once every couple of weeks(if its lucky)
Oh and for the record its a I7 quad core with 16GB RAM and a 500 gig HDD and it used to blast along with win 7 ......................
Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building
Friday 6th January 2023 17:05 GMT
Re: Operator Purée
You'd never get away with that now.
We have the robots in cages, you cant open the cage without pressing the big red button, and standing orders are if you have to work in the cage, your padlock goes through the breaker lever (mines a nice purple colour... I did offer the pink padlock to the PFY when she started..... she said she'd rather have the orange one... not exact words but we're in polite society here )
If you're found in the cage with the power still on.... all sorts of bad things will happen to you....... and then you'll be given a final warning/sacked
Beer because I've escaped to the pub
Rate of disruptive tech and science discoveries has slowed over the decades, claims study
Corporations start testing Windows 11 in bigger numbers. Good luck
Thursday 5th January 2023 18:38 GMT
Its not the stuff under the hood that the problem.
No one and I mean no one gives a stuff about stack protection.... or thread scheduling.
What people dont like is spending ages learning howto use tools and the program interfaces to those tools, and then some tool at m$ hq decides "Hey... its looks cooler as a flat icon that resembles a phone, and then we use contina to access the menus as a bonus feature" while the control panel has been renamed and hidden away further leaving the only option on the 'settings' tab "Reset to defaults"
I dont care how great the interface is.. and how many awards its won from the arts council if users have to spend 12 weeks learning the new interface... might just as well got linux if we wanted that.........
Japan lacks the expertise for renewed nuclear power after Fukushima
Wednesday 4th January 2023 22:31 GMT
I'm surprised
well not I'm not.
But looking over here at the dearth of skilled engineers, you do begin to wonder who's going to be keeping the lights on in 10 years time...
But I suppose its like a lot of skilled technical jobs that require a lot of knowledge and a hons degree level education, those who are capable of doing it are put off by the cost, the lack of pay , and the lack of chances for advancement. so only those than can afford to take the chance sign up to the course.
So it falls the government actually do something about it (removing university fees for STEM courses and sponsoring people who cant afford to take 3-4 years out for uni for a start )
But I have no hope that any government will do that........ even though it would help stop the 'crisis in the NHS' stories currently running(hint: train more staff, and build capacity for more beds.. although thats too bleedin obvious for any of the current lot of politicians)
India sets USB-C charging deadline for smartphones
Saturday 31st December 2022 12:34 GMT
Re: So much for "Brexit freedoms" eh ?
Quote
" We have lost any influence we had on one of the worlds biggest standards setters."
It may not occur to you, but we still export stuff to the rest of the world. and we have to make the damn stuff to the standard that country wants and dont have any say in what that standard is.... One of our customers exports to the US and has a line for that express purpose.
In fact sometimes he complains that its more difficult sending stuff to france than it is to the US, even though the stuff he makes has been made to the same french or US standards for the past 15 yrs.
Computing's big question for 2023: How many more questions can we endure?
An IT emergency during a festive visit to the in-laws? So sorry, everyone, I need to step out for a while
Friday 30th December 2022 11:17 GMT
I always go back
to the day after heart surgery when my boss called, not to see how I was (sore , pissed off, and full of morphine), but they had a problem that needed sorting and only I had the ability to sort it(which was a lie as I'd left instructions with several people about all sorts of problems including the one he was complaining about)
When I got back to work I blamed the drugs and pain for me telling him to f*** off
The era of cloud colonialism has begun
University students recruit AI to write essays for them. Now what?
BOFH and the office security access upgrade
Friday 23rd December 2022 10:45 GMT
Question
Why lock the boss in the stairwell?
Surely it would be better for the app to declare him dead in the lift and then since the lift is empty to turn the lift off to save electricity.
If he's in the stairwell, theres a chance in an emergency situation that somebody will use the stairwell and find him, however in an emergency, no one will want to use the lift.....
Anyways... merry xmas from my place of employment where I'm suppossed to be doing the annual cleandown.... but only after I finish running the backups(that were done yesterday so I can spend the rest of today before pub time sitting in the office browsing el-reg)
Cheers >>>>> icon
Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up
Friday 23rd December 2022 10:39 GMT
Re: Hmmmmmmm
Quote:
Humans are pretty good at driving.
No they bloody aren't.
Think how bad the average driver is, then make a note that 50% of drivers are worse than that.
We're talking the people who use 2 cable ties to defeat the 'hands on wheel' device , then climb into the back seat of the car and then blames the tesla for driving into a tree (I call this darwin in action)
But even without a tesla or its drive assist (or any other drive assist), people are almost completely useless at driving their cars..... eg last weekend, pissing with rain, heavy spray on the motorway.... nearly everyone is driving at the same distance apart at the same speed as they would on a bright sunny day even though you can barely see 100 yrds... and there were even a couple of cars with no lights on.......
All I see when tesla mention the drive assist is just another device like the seatbelt, airbags, and anti-lock brakes that protect the occupant of the car from the actions of the stupid around them.....and the stupid in the driving seat.
Don't lock the datacenter door, said the boss. The builders need access and what could possibly go wrong?
Friday 23rd December 2022 10:25 GMT
Re: rebooting the system
Quote
These are just recent examples. I've heard stupider and I'm guessing those reading this have heard much worse, especially those who work in IT (I'm a software developer, programmer, or software engineer, but none of these terms is properly understood by my acquaintances either).
Then you have not learned the mantra of every highly skilled technical staff member : "Never ever tell your friends/acquaintances/passers by exactly what you do"
Good luck fixing Auntie Flo's broadband connection on christmas day.......
FTX CTO and Alameda Research CEO admit fraud, pair 'cooperating' with Feds
UK's Guardian newspaper breaks news of ransomware attack on itself
Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement
Wednesday 21st December 2022 20:26 GMT
I'm sorry
but we all know there can be only one
To run twitter
El-reg's very own BoFH with his faithful PFY sidekick
Opps Mr Musk... that 23rd floor window I did report for being loose and unsteady, but we will state it was an accident when you tripped on that bag of corpse grade quick lime, rolled across the floor incidently wrapping yourself in the carpet before plummeting out of the aforementioned window into the back of the company van never to be seen again.
Financial authorities fine UK bank nearly $60m for platform migration disaster
Tuesday 20th December 2022 22:30 GMT
Re: subject for investigation
And that wisdom was usually gained by crying 'no no no' at meetings where all the mangler responsible wanted to hear was 'yes'
And then getting shouted at for sabotage when the project fell over and burned because it was an ill concieved idea in the first place.
With the result the mangler either went up the ladder for 'showing leadership and ideas in a crisis situation' or was moved sideways to 'help another department in crisis'
While us poor engineering types gathered up the pieces and made something that we should have done in the first place ....which the new mangler took credit for in their attempt to go up the ladder.....
Patch Tuesday update is causing some Windows 10 systems to blue screen
Carmack quits Meta, brands it inefficient and unprepared for competition
Monday 19th December 2022 20:30 GMT
Re: (Senior) Managemant
From what I've seen of manglement
Manglement is all about stamping down on the minions below you, back stabbing the manglers at your level and arse kissing the mangler above you.
And since I cant do any of the above.... guess I'm stuck at the level of irreplacable* technical expert
*hint for new to the world of IT/engineering/anything really.... never be irreplacable, if you cant be replaced , you'll never get promoted
Elon Musk starts poll with one question: Should I step down as head of Twitter?
When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration
Monday 19th December 2022 20:13 GMT
Re: Whoops - lets do it again and watch this time.
I have this on unimpeachable authority that this tale is true.
There was a case like this near me ages ago.
Said operator managed to crush his fingers in a press brake... all nicely broken and bleeding...... so pack him off to the hospital for fixing
He came back 8 weeks later to a manager and health and safety inquiry about how that accident happened...
So he loads up the press brake with a part , slides his hand in where its not supposed to go and pushes the treadle..... crunch.
Loads of blue flashing lights as he goes back to the hospital to have his fingers unmangled again......
Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged
Friday 16th December 2022 19:26 GMT 
WFH
remains my dream
100% of the time I'm paid, I'm in the office... or shop floor or ranting about how stuffs gone wrong (see the interlock comments)
I cant do my job from home... sure the programming, and complaining at tool suppliers that their prices are too high I could.... but then disaster can strike at any moment and my body is required at work not 45 mins away.
But as other people have mentioned, if your metric for 'getting work done' is a full office with 100% of seats that have bums on them....... then you're a pretty crummy manager.
Our metric is simple....."Have we made money this month?" and if that means one of the programmers sits at home all day on his laptop doing programming, then brings in the finished product the next day for testing, then as far as we're concerned, hes done a good days work. we dont need to see him in the chair opposite me. we dont need to know hes done 'X' amount of code (lets face it, lines of code/day is a lousy way of measuring productivity too).
plus he's taken the kids to school, and had an hour for lunch with his other 1/2 which makes him a happy employee.... which is quite valuable.
Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break
Friday 16th December 2022 13:49 GMT
The hell that
is interlock switches....
where I attend on a daily basis has them everywhere... safety doors, robot cages, manager's ofice door(no wait I'm fitting that one next week...)
What really bugs me about them is that every machine/robot manufacturer goes out of their way to use a different switch on everything, so that when an interlock switch goes to the great cage in the sky, you have to get the exact one to replace it. even if the machinery is supplied by one company, they have to use different switches on the enclosures.
Oh... and dont try running the machinery after bypassing the lock.... that ends......... badly
On the plus side though it gives the janitor something different to mop up.....
Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users
Wednesday 14th December 2022 19:49 GMT 
Nope nope and...........
Nope!
I dont have one at home , cant see the point of it.
However I could try one at work.....and use it for doing my job.......
Alexa: Load model <customer name><part number>
Alexa : Rotate model Z axis 90 degrees positive.
Alexa : extract model edges at grid 45, 78
Alexa: Move extracted edges to Z datum plane.
Alexa : Link missing edges.
Alexa : define high speed path using Z plane as template.
All well and reasonable... except I'd have to be damn precise in my wording and know full well I'd have to do it 3 or 4 times using a voice assistant....
Whereas using the mouse/keyboard would take me about 50% less time with far less errors.
Sorry amazon/google/apple/et al , but about the only use for your toys is playing music,and setting alarms.and a small side order of letting the powers that be watch us all the time(if they can be bothered)
Server installer fails to spot STOP button – because he wasn't an archaeologist
Monday 12th December 2022 22:10 GMT
Painters... the
memories........ the bad ones
The company I worked for a long long time ago decided on "corporate rebranding" to enliven our rather scruffy appearance.
Paint colours were considered.... new overalls, t shirts, sweat shirts all colour coordinated to got with the new paint job, however all the machinery had to be repainted too...
For us CNC pilots, it wasn't too bad.. at least the painters managed not to paint over the computer screens... however , in the precision grinding bay it was a very different story.
Hand dials, the digital displays all painted over, and the rather precise mating surfaces that the grinders moved over were de-greased and painted over.
Took us 2 weeks to undo the damage and resume production.....
Luckily that mangler only lasted another few months before being rightfully booted for being a wasteful prick... to be replaced by a horay henry fresh from private schooling/oxford.... and hes another very long story.....
UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content
Saturday 10th December 2022 11:21 GMT
Back to
the good old days of IRC and FTP to share the naughty stuff then.
Until the the great british firewall is erected.
But then I guess that will be like youtubes algorithms that forces me to sign in with a credit card to prove my age to watch some friends play a video game, but will quite happily let me watch pulp fiction's 'apartment' scene uncensored
"say 'what' again I double dare you ....."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
