* Posts by Andy Miller

163 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Sep 2008

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Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

Andy Miller

Or he'd be stuck in a Clef Stick

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

Andy Miller

The RAF ate my homework

A friend of mine grew up in Abingdon UK and went to school by bus. One day, on arriving at school he found that he no longer had his school bag with him. Meanwhile, the RAF had spotted a suspicious item next to a bus stop on the edge of RAF Abingdon, sent in a robot and given the bag a couple of blasts with the shotgun....

Server installer fails to spot STOP button – because he wasn't an archaeologist

Andy Miller

We had that. I hit it.

TypeScript joins 5 most used languages in 2022 lineup

Andy Miller

This week's chart

Who else heard "Whole Lotta Love" as they read all those charged chart positions?

An international incident or just some finger trouble at the console?

Andy Miller

Seen similar

Why did I instantly think of the Trotter's clean a chandelier ?

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

Andy Miller

Just another day

Looping through ***** is standard operating procedure for most companies. Glad to hear of someone clearly labelling it

Happy birthday, Windows Vista: Troubled teen hits 15

Andy Miller

Re: "It's amazing how bad that client/license manager is"

" There's no contest to this,"

Bob?

Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK

Andy Miller

Re: Zig, Rust, Rust, Rust, Go, TypeScript, Haskell, Ć, Python, C#, Elixir, Swift, Java, and Pascal

According to the docs on Github "Ć is a programming language which can be translated automatically to C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Swift, TypeScript and OpenCL C."

A new one on me, but then I'm very old....

Samsung releases pair of jeans that can't do anything except cover your legs and hold a Galaxy Z Flip 3

Andy Miller

Trouser version

Surely these should be "Z Flip 3 Pocket Denim 1"?, which sounds like the pools results.....

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Andy Miller

A bunch of mindless jerks...

Sirius Cybernetics Corporation

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

Andy Miller

For the Alice and Bob accounts at one company, I always used pictures of Alice Cooper and 'Bob' from Black Adder. So I'd already proven those names to apply to both genders

US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

Andy Miller

"Security NEVER made anything more performant, available, or reliable." Really?

If you can stop those crypto-currency miners running on your network edge boxes, don't you get a performance boost?

If you can stop ransomware slingers encrypting your data, doesn't your platform become more available?

If you can filter out DDoS traffic from real traffic, don't you get more reliability?

Windows 11 gets chatty as Teams integration turns up

Andy Miller

Re: When is an OS....

The original UK Monotony anyway. You can now buy a 'local' set for any village or town of more than about 250 people.

Snakes on a Plane meets The Simpsons as airline creates ‘whacker’ to scare reptiles away from parked A380s

Andy Miller

Reuse

Surely this is just a modern use for the famous Australian Bushwacker?

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

Andy Miller

RA

Can I see the risk assessment for something that delivers a stream of boiling water onto your desk when you hit the wrong button, please?

Their 'next job could be in cyber': UK Cyber Security Council launches itself by pointing world+dog to domain it doesn't own

Andy Miller

I've been on many Morris related piss-ups, at least two in breweries, and they all have been excellent (as far as I can remember....)

Andy Miller

I know quite a few Morris Dancers who are Cyber Security practitioners. I wouldn't expect a Morris side to make this scale of blunder.

Does Samsung want you to buy new phones? Asking 'cos Galaxies now get four years of security updates

Andy Miller

Up until now I believe the policy has been two years support from launch, new version of each model once a year. So just before the new model you were effectively getting 1 year of updates. This puts the effective years of support to between 3 and 4 years, which is doable.

A couple of times I'd ignored Samsung as an option, because:

* I needed a phone now,

* the existing model had been out 11 months,

* I wasn't going to wait for the new one

* I wanted more than 13 months of updates.

LibreOffice 7.1 Community released with user-interface picker, other bits and bytes

Andy Miller

Re: "Reveal Codes in WordPerfect (remember that?)"

I hung onto WordPerfect for years to keep Reveal Codes. The amount of time I spend these days thinking "Why in the name of all that's holy has Word stuck That content There, and how do I stop it!?". Please, I want reveal codes back !

Debian 'Bullseye' enters final phase before release as team debates whether it will be last to work on i386 architecture

Andy Miller

Re: Bullseye...

Great ! Smashing ! Super !

Lenovo reveals smart specs that let you eyeball five virtual displays, with strings attached

Andy Miller

I have questions

These could be great for working from home / on the train / in a hotel room / in a coffee shop, but....

Can I fit prescription lens?

How does it sit with a headset?

Rocky has competition as more CentOS alternatives step into the ring: Project Lenix, Oracle Linux vie for attention

Andy Miller
Joke

I always feared...

The takeover of Big Red by Big Blue would leave users marooned....

Microsoft celebrates undead MS Paint with festive knitwear

Andy Miller

Dumpster?

I don't know about a dumpster, I'm seeing Terry Jones as the nude organist from Monty Python.....

After Cummings' Barnard Castle trip, cheeky Britons started using the word 'vision' in their passwords

Andy Miller

Re: Just wondering..

I'm told our IT department have explicitly blocked that one

Samsung throws more frugal followers a bone* with cheaper Galaxy S20 Fanboi Fan Edition

Andy Miller

Re: 5G for £699

I read the phrase "Samsung only plans to release the 5G model in the United States" several times, trying to reconcile it with the UK price for the 5G version. I think they might mean "Samsung plans to release only the 5G model in the United States". Maybe?

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Andy Miller

Do they do monitor stands as well?

Energizer Hard Case H280S: A KaiOS-powered blower that can withstand a few knocks

Andy Miller

Lanyard anchor point?

All very well being waterproof, but if it's 30 fathoms down it's not going to get a signal. In many of it's use cases, I'd like it tethered to me.

I heard somebody say: Burn baby, burn – server inferno!

Andy Miller

Re: Tricks of the trade.

I had one colleague who always complained about the heat. One morning he came in early and super-glued the thermostatic valve on the office radiator shut, but still he complained.

At some point he decided to stop drinking coca-cola by the 2-litre bottle full. Soon he stopped complaining about the heat, and actually closed the window....

The self-disconnecting switch: Ghost in the machine or just a desire to save some cash?

Andy Miller

Bailiffs

In a previous century the company I was working for wanted to port their software from HP Rocky Mountain Basic workstations to these new PC things. We hired a sub-contractor to assist, which involved loaning them one of the large and expensive optic fibre test machine that we made.

At some point I got a whiff that the subby might be having cash-flow problems, so I suggested to our TD that it might be worth us moving the kit back to our site. The subby could carry on working on it, but in our office. So the TD and I get into the biggest car we could borrow, and set off for the subby.

Shortly after, we are sitting in the subby's MDs office, and the MD was denying that there was a problem, when the secretary pops her head round the door to say that there are a couple of bailiffs in reception. The MD kept the bailiffs talking whilst me, my TD and the subbies software engineer passed our large optical instrument and the subbies development machine out the window, into the car and away....What fun !

Windows takes a tumble in the land of the Big Mac and Bacon Double Cheeseburger

Andy Miller

"Is it true some now serve beer?" It certainly is in Naples.

And it's correctly pronounced "MuckDonald's"

Microsoft boffin inadvertently highlights .NET image woes by running C# on Windows 3.11

Andy Miller

Re: "Visual Studio is a paid-for product"

"Turbo Pascal didn't make you pay for its dev environment, nor did Borland ever do that"

Apart from confusing the product with the company, my copy of Byte from 1989 shows Turbo Pascal going for £99, or £169 for the Pro edition. They did do a free version later in the Windows era, but that had a limited licence and Microsoft had a similar edition.

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

Andy Miller

Re: Placement of kill switch and other quirks

This placement makes a lot of sense when you are leaving and turning the light on. When you're coming in and groping for the switch to turn the light on, line of sight is not that relevant. Motion sensors for lights people... At least this story has made me feel better about taking out all the customer support gateways....

Come mobile users, gather round and learn how to add up

Andy Miller

Freedom

Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4. f that is granted, all else follows

Well that went well: Polycom sold for the same figure it fetched two years ago

Andy Miller

Better than most

At least they got back what they paid for it. Bettr than most folks manage in these cases.

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

Andy Miller

Re: This one, every time

You must be a wizard. Muggle pictures don't move

How many Routemaster bus seats would it take to fill Wembley Stadium?

Andy Miller

I still hear "Olympic-sized swimming pool" in a Welsh accent

Drone perves defeated by tinfoil houses

Andy Miller

Re: 410 Shotgun is your friend :)

410 Gone

User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot

Andy Miller

Re: This kind of idiocy is not confined to matters IT

I recall an undergraduate experiment that required refluxing from boiling petrol. The instruction clearly said to use a water bath. Most of us used the electric water baths. One genius got a large (glass) water bath, and stuck a Bunsen under it. The fumes crept over the edge, and soon his desk, his lab-book and his hair was alight. He was put out before he suffered any lasting damage....

Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre

Andy Miller

Elfin Safety....

Not in the server room, but one of my colleagues used to work on his mini in the barn we rented for noisy engine tests. This was after hours and in his own time, so not an issue. Until one winter evening, whilst removing the radiator, his hand slipped and his arm got jammed between the radiator and the front of the car. Luckily, the hand-brake was off, and he managed to drag the car across the barn to the phone, and contact a another colleague who came and extracted him.

Software update turned my display and mouse upside-down, says user

Andy Miller

Upside down you're turning me

When I was working for a TV equipment manufacturer, one of the image processing scientists had a film clip that they used for image quality testing. To decouple the image from reality, this was turned upside down. One Friday we went down to his office to see if he was coming to the pub. He wasn't around, but this clip was playing on a rather expensive, broadcast quality monitor. We decided to fix this by turning the monitor upside-down (hard work, those things were heavy). When he reappeared, it took him a couple of minutes to spot what we had done. We all had a laugh, and then turned the monitor back over. Then we realised that the screen had become magnetised, and there were nasty colour fringes everywhere. A couple of degausses helped, but didn't cure it.

What was to be done? We went to the pub. When we came back the monitor had settled, and we were all very relieved.

US Navy developers test aircraft carrier drone control software

Andy Miller

Would I be right in thinking that this is a cats and traps only design? So not something us Brits can buy for our catlass Queen Lizzies? Who exactly thought a catless carrier was a good idea?

Gone in 70 seconds: Holding Enter key can smash through defense

Andy Miller

Re: Missing item in the series?

is a specialist Linux distro that uses the whitespace language as it's default shell

Virgin Galactic and Boom unveil Concorde 2.0 tester to restart supersonic travel

Andy Miller

Re: No so great in time savings

I share your reservations. To make it work the airlines are going to have to put some effort into streamlining the time from check-in to take-off, and landing to check-out. With a small, business-class only plane, mostly full of frequent fliers, this shouldn't be beyond the wit of person. Even BAA may not worry too much; business travellers spend most of their time in their lounges, so there may be little point in holding them for 2 hours in an over-priced shopping centre.

Andy Miller

Re: whoop!

But you won't be able to take your Note 7 aboard

‘Penultimate’ BlackBerry seen on 'do not publish' page as fire sale begins

Andy Miller

A "convenience key" ? Can it unlock public toilets? That would be the first innovative feature I've seen on a smartphone for some years.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Andy Miller

Re: Portrayal of computer tech guys in films/tv.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Vodafone hints at relocation from UK

Andy Miller

Re: Bye Bye Then

Tell that to the staff.

Label your cables: A cautionary tale from the server room

Andy Miller

Also, your phone has a camera. Take lots of pictures as you move stuff. You can always delete them later.

Linux command line mistake 'nukes web boss'S biz'

Andy Miller

Re: Format C:

At one time 'format' defaulted to the current drive. So all you had to do was miss off the A:... IIRC they fixed that one (probably around DOS 4?)

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