Posts by Kobus Botes

Re: Analog kid in a digital world...

@phogan99

"The limiting factor is the equipment it's played on."

In my second year of electronic engineering studies our electronics professor had much to say about that. At the time (late seventies) wow and flutter (or lack thereof) was all the rage and manufacturers of tape recorders/players and turntables usually very prominently quoted how low its products' w&f were. I cannot remember exact figures, but I seem to remember premium products would be in the region of 1-2 %.

The prof's rant was about how we wasted money doing that, as the best and most expensive speakers of the time (Bang & Olufsen comes to mind) could not better 5%. And if I am not mistaken, the human ear cannot do much better in any case (any sound engineers who can weigh in on that?).

Re: HP

@Admiral Grace Hopper

"...until the LaserJet II died".

I used an LJet II that we bought somewhere in '88/'89. I was supposed to have dumped it, but since there was nothing wrong with it and it was perfectly suited for the little printing I did (plus there were still a couple of new toner cartridges around), I kept it.

It was still chugging along fine when I left the company in 2007.

The only way to get them to stop working (icon) ---------------------------->

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

...designed by people who know where they want to go and how to get there...

This happened in South Africa as well. Guidance signs on freeways around cities used to tell you where the next off-ramp goes (i.e. suburb or town, et cetera). Then someone in government decided that that is too easy, so all signs were converted to the street name (or road designation) if it puts you on a road somewhere else.

So where previously you would have seen Welgemoed Bellville Parow at exit 20 on the N1 in Cape Town (going east), you are now confronted with Mike Pienaar Blvd Jip de Jager ln M16. Even for locals, going to a suburb where you do not often venture, it is easy to miss your turn-off.

It's beyond stupid.

Re: Adding a comment sometimes caused compile failure

@Paul Shirley

"...by throwing multiple errors for each line..."

The PL/1 compiler on the Univac 1100 we used at university in the early eighties did that too. Although I suspect that it had a time or page limit, as it would stop after probably 100 fanfold pages (I used to have lots of scrap paper for mocking up my flowcharts and writing code - in fact, I still have a couple of those in amongst stuff I kept for some reason, but which will be finally get thrown away once I start clearing the shed).

Icon for "Why did I keep it again?

Re: Mmmmmm

Replying to my own post:

Outlook is still a problem - it either times out connecting, or says the server is unreachable.

Downloaded and installed Thunderbird, set it up and mail is flowing.

Re: Next great idea

@Old Used Programmer

"At the time, the blades were carbon steel and only lasted for a few shaves."

I had a very interesting conversation with someone many years ago (somewhere in the nineties). He worked in an R&D lab for a large company producing razors amongst other things (he was unwilling to say who it was) and according to him a couple of them unofficially experimented with carbon coatings on blades. They managed to produce blades that were super sharp and did not go blunt: at the time of our conversation he was still using the first of the three blades he kept for himself - this was some three to four years later.

Management was less than enthusiastic about these shenanigans (they very enthusiastically gave a presentation and demonstration to senior management, all starry-eyed about the possibilities and market reaction) and ordered them to hand in all samples for destruction. All further research in the same vein was forthwith forbidden to boot.

Most of us are naïve that way. Just look at the history of the Internet and networking. I certainly (in my small involvement in establishing Intrawebs) never considered the malicious ways sharing and linking could be abused, given the bright new future .

Re: .. never used .. ?

Replying to my own post:

Some of my maligned memory cells have taken umbrage at my slanderous suggestion that they are fading as I was just reliably informed that the mini computer was in fact a DEC VAX (brand new at the time).

Second correction: we wrote in assembly, not machine code (although we had to write a couple of small programs in machine code).

Re: Why bother?

@TRT: "...energy required to roll one up these things..."

Our company moved into a new building in the late '90s. Since IT was seen more as a grudge expense by the local beancounters, the server room was specced to be the absolute minimum it could be (the rear doors on the racks could only be opened half-way whilst the front doors had about 5mm clearance to the wall).

In order to facilitate working on the backs of the racks when required, a decision was made to put the racks on wheels.

The first time we had to move the racks (four side-by-side, bolted together) three of us could not move it at all. We would have been able to push the whole lot over before it moved - in fact, we abandoned the exercise when we tilted the rack by a scary amount (due to lack of space to get down low enough to apply force to the bottom of the cabinets rather that at chest height).

The general concensus was that the cabling was too heavy (it disappeared into the raised floor cavity), coupled with the fact that the rubberised wheels were flattened (seen upon closer inspection), as well as the fact that the wheels had caused depressions in the vinyl tiles. And there were only about four servers per rack (to provide for future expansion, which never happened, as almost all servers were later virtualised, rather that have single O/S boxes).

Since we could not go ------------------------->

Re: Those moneychangers...

@Snake

""What went wrong" is that finance people got a hold of..."

You can enter ANY company/entity there. I do not think there is one example where financial people took over running a company, that ended well for anybody else (part from the financial people). Once an accountant starts calling the shots, the focus moves from the product/service delivered to maximizing shareholder returns. These two goals are diametrically opposed and will almost inevitably lead to the demise of said entity in the medium to long term.

I once asked an accountant in the company I worked for at the time, why they have such a short term

outlook. His answer was that they only live from the current financial year to the next. Whatever happens beyond that is unknowable and therefore of no concern. His second reason was that they abhor uncertainty and would rather opt for a certain negative result (even if ruinous), over an uncertain (possibly positive) result.

My feeling is that, once accountants take over, you should get out as soon as possible and cash in.

(Tektronix I seem to remember)

What a horrible piece of kit that was!

We got one for printing client meeting documents since it certainly had the best-looking output. All very impressive and professional looking.

Until the first client wanted to make notes on his document (as most people did) and discovered that it was impossible to write on it with any normal pen or pencil.

But what made the machine particularly horrible was the fact that it had an endearing feature: it used an optical disc for calibration in order to line up the different colours. Said disc was fixed on a rotating hard-chromed rod by means of a tiny screw that needed to be tightened in order to fix the disc in place. The optical disc was securely fixed to a hefty brass bush - lots of inertia and momentum.

The net effect was that a technician needed to visit us on a weekly (and sometimes more often) basis in order to get the alignment correct, as it started going out of spec almost immediately due to the low friction that could be achieved with the set-up it had.

===================> For the stupid moron(s) who designed and signed it off (that's how I felt at the time, since I was always called to fix the thing, even though it was a leased machine and not my responsibility, and despite the fact that they knew I did not have the requisite knowledge nor special tool to correctly affix the disc).

Re: ...generally available in South Africa North and South Africa West

Two thumbs down?

Satya and whoever wrote that drivel?

Or is it the allusion to American's shocking knowledge of geography? Then you should award yourselves athumb down or two:

https://www.rferl.org/a/1068259.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10640690/Americans-surveyed-misunderstood-misrepresented-or-ignorant.htmlhttps://www.earth.com/news/american-geographic-illiteracy-security-threat/

Ohhhh... I get it - it was the (NSFW) typo. Now I've learned something I did not necessarily want to know.

Oops.

(Kept the links in case that was what rankled).

Ps. Icon for my (innocent) spelling error)

PPs I withdrew my original comment in order to protect the innocent at work (failed to add NSFW)

Re: Informal poll on whether you've ever had to do something like this

@rmason

Reminds me of the time we needed to restore a particular user's mailbox (user having departed six months earlier and suspicious uhmmm... activities detected later by a successor) in order to search for evidence (not by us). Only to find that an Exchange 5 mail store could only be restored to an Exchange 5 server, so we had to build one (having upgraded in the mean time).

Only to find that it could only be restored to the original Exchange 5 server, or one built on an exact same machine (same m/b and processor at least; possibly same size hard drive as well - memory's fading).

Only to discover that one could not restore individual mailboxes - the whole thing had to be restored and the particular mailbox then extracted.

Took about three weeks to accomplish what should have been a straightforward job.

================> Our reaction at the time.

Re: "No panic, no forced reboot."

@AC

"You can choose when to reboot with Windows too"

Man, I must have been seriously hallucinating the numerous times I have witnessed Windows (including W10) reboot without warning (or my favourite W10 trick - advising you that Windows need to reboot in less than a minute and then promptly dying before you have finished reading the warning). Even if you have set every parameter to prevent that from happening; including setting it to only update and reboot only after hours.

==============> Not me; you.

Will MS ...extend this new feature to remove problem applications like Libre Office?

@Version 1.0

Windows 10 has had that ability right from the start and that was one of my concerns with the technology (not to imply that MS are planning/want to do it); it becomes all too easy to abuse ("accidentally" remove LO or any other (undesirable by MS) program?) whilst having plausible deniability.

See https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2016/05/17/microsoft_windows_7_and_81_fixes_now_rollup_bundles/#c_2868324 and https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2016/05/02/desktop_os_market_share_april_2016/#c_2853826 in this regard.

Re: I've been on the receiving end of this

@Khaptain

Sir Archibald, is that you?

We all feel like that, Khaptain, now and then...

Paris, because, well duh!

Re: epub

@ elgarak1

..."trying to be similar to Word"

There is the elephant in the room that people criticising LibreOffice/OpenOffice seem to ignore/gloss over (not suggesting you are doing it - this is just a handy entry point): I suspect the problem the devs have is that to get traction, people expect it to be feature similiar to MS Office. In order to do that, ALL Office's quirks have to included as well, otherwise its behaviour will not be the same.

I am certain that the LibreOffice/Oo.o devs can think of a miriad ways to improve on MS Office, but have their hands tied behind their backs.

Not being a programmer, I have often wondered whether it would not be possible to have a super suite that has wonderful features that people want, and then have a MS Office compatibility mode when saving, that warns you about features that will not render/work under MS Office.

It would be nice if one of the devs could weigh in on this.

Re: A high viz vest?

@TrumpSlurp the Troll

..."all this "safety" gear doesn't make you safer. It just makes you feel invulnerable and encourages you to do stupid things!"

That applies to people in vehicles as well. The safer cars are made, the more reckless people seem to become, as they assume that they will not be hurt/killed should they be involved in an accident. Hence the argument against wearing seatbelts, for instance, as the belief is that the airbag will protect you against harm.

Ditto for people in cars that are close to self-drive (like Teslas) - a seemingly utter belief that the car will sort itself out.

@Mephistro

You do realise that the Reg hacks have automated posts since 21 Dec and are blissfully ignorant of whatever commentards post? (Apart from those containing pre-determined text that would be automatically forwarded to whoever need to know. Responses to those, however, are also run by scripts).

Anyway, happy New Year to one and all!

--------------------------------------------->

Sadly, in the absence of a fizzy wine icon.

Re: Daily dose

@Dwarf

I wonder how many other internally visible services have amber monitoring right now ???

All's green (externally, at least).

But then again, on Tuesday when Azure MFA fell over and servers were rebooted left, right and centre, Azure status reports were all green as well.

Boy, am I glad I am retired now!

Re: Repeat

@Mattmattic

Upvoted you - they just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge.

(Sorry Douglas! Ducks)

Re: Window Snyder

Just missed the edit window.

Noticed too late it is her actual name. Maybe her parents made the reference?

Still a cool record, though.

Re: Back in the day

@Nial

The first PC I specced (in 1985) was for an IBM XT PC (XT indicating that it came with a hard drive, rather than two floppy drives). The standard disk was a wopping 5MB - I had it upgraded to 10MB (the cost was prohibitive).

When one of the senior directors wanted to know whether it was sufficient, my answer was that we would not be able to fill it in our lifetimes (given that floppies were 256KB and the operating system (DOS 1) plus all the programs (Multimate, Lotus-123, Harvard Graphics) took up less than 2MB). Lotus-123 spreadsheets typically ran below 10KB, as did Multimate files, so yeah - plenty of storage.

And the whole system cost about 10% more than an entry-level 5-series BMW, so EXPENSIVE!

... that it was quite acceptable to hang up on a customer...

@phuzz

I received a call from one of our Business Unit's senior directors at head office, about a local problem we had (can't remember exactly what it was - 20 years or so ago, but as I recall it involved an Exchange problem that I had troubleshot and determined what the problem was when they took too long to do anything about it (we used to do our own troubleshooting and maintenance out in the provinces, but those privileges were rescinded and moved to HO, due to one of my colleagues in another province deleting most of the company user mail accounts (he thought he was working on his local server, but was actually on the main server, and all he wanted to do was clean up his user accounts. We had warned them initially that it was daft to give everyone admin rights on all servers and that it should be compartmentalised with access restricted to local servers only, but they knew better). I somehow still had the admin password, so was able to pinpoint the problem and then sent an e-mail to the clever hotshots (using my HoTMaiL account, when Hotmail was still fresh and cool), detailing what the problem was and also giving the fix. I was not being a smart-arse about it - I just wanted the problem to be fixed asap, as my users were getting grumpier as the hours went by).

Anyhow - as I picked up the receiver the flecks of spittle were coming out the earpiece as he lay into me. When I got a gap I politely asked him to stop shouting and swearing at me, or I would hang up on him; which I did when he started screaming at me again. About ten seconds later the phone rang again - same story.

After I had hung up I went to my boss and gave him the whole story. He was quite supportive (not that I expected anything less - he was super) and said that he would sort it out. About an hour later I got a call from the same director, this time meek as a lamb and most apologetic.

Oh, the problem had disappeared about ten minutes after I hung up on him the second time.

Not me - the main protagonist above ----->

"LibreOffice is one of the biggest problems..."

I suspect the biggest obstacle faced by Libre Office (and Open Office and others) is the insistence by users and those in charge that LO/OOo must be 100% compatible with MS Office. This is of course impossible.

I have always wondered whether it would not perhaps be more beneficial to LO/OOo to develop a better suite, (that has a proper interface that allows users to be productive and not fight the application and with advanced functionality that MSO does not have), with an MS extention on that would convert documents to the crippled MS format as best as is possible.

Probably a pipe dream, but I would appreciate if if a dev involved in an OSS suite could perhaps shed some more light.