Posts by Captain DaFt

Re: Falcon

Reminds me of one place I worked.

One small loading dock was suddenly claimed by sparrows and pigeons as a perfect roosting spot, crap everywhere.

Nobody knows why they suddenly decided to claim it, just because, I guess.

The answer was to get four bird scarers that consisted of large Styrofoam balls with large eyes painted on them and streamers underneath that moved in the slightest breeze, Guaranteed to chase off birds.

Within a week, three had fallen due to the bird crap piled on them, and the fourth had a nest on it.

Occasionally some unlucky contractor would park their van there under the overhang, and return to find it rather encrusted.

Local hawks would perch on the light fixtures across the tarmac and enjoy easy pickings.

The long term solution? Don't use that dock, Worked well.

Re: Print is Dead

"I always took the phrase to be referring to junk mail and stuff like that."

Apparently Direct TV never got that memo. I have gotten as many as 15(!!) flyers a day from them via snail mail.

Re: Terrified robots?

"- download a Yoko Ono mp3 into it"

G'damm! Are you trying to get all humans killed?

'Cause that's how you get ROTM, y'know!

Re: IT

"IT angle? Isn't that about 37 1/2 degrees?"

Personally, I've always pictured the "IT Angle" as exactly 45 degrees. the defining angle between obtuse and acute. :)

Re: Not such a bad read.

Articles like this get few comments despite being read (and re-read) because they are informative and interesting.

No Snark needs to be added.

"I would have hinted towards one LESS Marissa"

We need a lot less of her type of management skills, male or female.

Odd thing, the warning sign is always right there when they make a statement when taking the position.

Anyone that comes into a job, announcing all the solutions to all the company's woes before they've even bothered with such banalities as taking interviews with staff, consulting department heads, and taking a good hard look at the company's ledgers, should be immediately barred from the premises and terminated as incurably stupid.

Re: except

"no law abiding citizen should have anything to fear from that."

That's already taken care of, There are no law abiding citizens in the US.

Re: Simpler solution

"Put a blindfold on and stop up the ears of the frightened lass."

Eh, just get her and some unlucky sod drunk and leave them in a hotel room.

She'd probably be much mellower afterward, but he'd probably commit suicide.

Re: Safety Margin

Well, the LHC generates about 30 petabytes of data a year, and that's just one data generator running in academia. (Biggest? I dunno.)

We're still sifting through space mission data from the seventies, some of which has actually been lost due to changing storage formats and media deterioration.

I expect exponentially more science data to be generated in future endeavors, so a medium that could theoretically last "forever" for all intents and purposes to be a good thing for science.

Re: Breaking news!

"Black holes suck even more than Windows 10."[Citation needed]

Re: El Reg edition?

WAITING FOR FAA APPROVAL - Lose all turns until you roll 12 consecutive double sixes.

Re: Odd really.

>groan< That was appalling, have an upvote.

Re: My Model 100s

"Most recently while debugging one of my KIM-1s."

How old are your KIM-1s? Since they originally came out in 1976, you just might have a contender(s?) for oldest running computer right there!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1

Re: Million? Is that all?

Steady now. If the SEC comes down too hard on US companies, the companies just might stop the cash, travel, gifts, and entertainment they now so generously bestow on members of the House and Senate as "campaign contributions", and "fact finding missions*".

So lets just write this off as "cost of doing business" and move on, shall we?

*I've always been amazed at the amount of facts that can apparently be unearthed in the Bahamas.

What did they actually buy Nokia for?

Best I can figure is that Ballmer saw the end coming for his reign, and the Nokia purchase was his way of giving Microsoft the finger on his way out.

Re: Real utility

I was thinking about the Stateside school's penchant for "Taco Tuesday". Might cause a massive false positive every week!

Re: There are no words

Has anyone ever seen any evidence of a QA dept. at Adobe?

Re: Agenda, agenda

"a senior manager who insisted on having meetings with a fixed, repeating agenda - often going over the same points each week despite the specific agenda points covering work that would take weeks or even months to complete."

Sounds like he was using meetings to cover his CRS* disorder.

*Can't Remember Shit

Re: Its the 21st century, why are we still arguing over sexuality?

well I consider myself a bit Victorian about about sexual mores.

As in, "As long as they don't do it in the streets, frightening the horses", it's nobody else's business.

Re: Single Source

"No only that but would you want that one supplier to be your direct rival?"

Works both ways.

Maybe Amazon should be asking itself, "How can we successfully compete against a major client without hurting our own bottom line?"

Re: Oh, why not?

"It's been said that Aristotle Onassis had the bar stools on one of his yachts clothed in sperm whale foreskin."

Actually, they were normally footstools, but when the maid dusted them...

Re: weird thing is...

"First, nobody really wins except the lawyers."

ORLY?

SCO sued IBM, hoping to use the lawsuits to get IBM to pony up the cash to buy them out and make SCO go away.

Bad move. IBM does not forgive, it does not forget, it will crush you.

One of the main things that keeps this farce moving forward is that as soon as SCO's last lawsuit is closed, it's IBM's turn.

And after IBM has had it's turn, there will be a tasteful plaque mounted on the wall in the main reception center.

Mounted on the plaque will be the castrated, broken, charred, mutilated corpse of SCO, with the inscription:

"Fuck with with us, and this will be you."

So as long as SCO can keep the day of reckoning just one more day further away, no matter the cost or humiliation to do so, they will.

Re: I loath what Microsoft are doing

"Sigh, my Lumia is almost two years old. Do I just keep it"

Sure, why not if it does everything you need.

I was in a similar position with my phone. I didn't like the looks of the alternatives, ended up just replacing the battery.

"I detest the "think of the children" excuse since it has been misused to endorse (or enforce) dubious political schemes so many times, but there are rare occasions when it does have merit."

The children are actually a small part of it.

It's Mom and/or Pop that buy the toys, and their credit data is exposed, plus the whole family's privacy being violated by a company whose attitude is, "Yeah? So what? Sucks to be you, we're good, we already have your money loser!"

The only thing that's going to affect them is people wising up and avoiding the VTech brand like the tainted trash it is.

Re: “why do SCO's backers keep it alive?”

"Are the penalties so egregious that they can't break the contract?"

Right now the firm is probably passing off the paperwork to a couple of unpaid interns as "experience".

Cheaper than fighting the automatic lawsuit that'd happen if they broke the contract.

"Yeah form your own opinions people, by looking at facts that you can verify and then look at all the lies the Chinese government spouts. As a general rule, never believe what a Chinese official say."

All good points.

But... If you substitute "American" for "Chinese" in all your statements, They mostly still ring true.

Re: Regarding that Gawd-awful graphic.

- read all the names of the scum polluting my "browsing experience", -

Here's a list to get you started, happy hunting!

Re: Telecoms companies

"I'm curious, what telecoms companies rely on GPS for any timekeeping?"

Considering the timing of the two events*... Maybe BT?

*GPS glitch and BT downtime

Re: Microsoft's Shortage of Electrical Engineers

"Microsoft's Shortage of Electrical Engineers"

Um... was that phrasing intentional?

If so, I'll upvote you for the pun alone. :)

Re: How's that work again...

"SAP pay Govt bribe to make criminal charges for bribery go away?"

Oh no no no no! Bribes are illegal. Laws were passed to make this a fine, and therefore legal.

If SAP had similarly *ahem* encouraged the Panama Government to make it legal to contribute "company sponsored investments" to local officials, no laws would have been broken in the first place.

But is was most likely cheaper/faster to do it this way. Costs of business and all that.

"@DaveyDaveDave.

You owe me a keyboard."

I learned long ago to avoid reading comments in El Reg while eating/drinking. Cuts way down on the mess.

"We're still on analogue electricity round here, but looking forward to when HD electricity becomes available."

And then, two years later, have the shocking revelation that your old HD electricity is obsolete, and now have to rewire your whole house to upgrade to 4K.

The problem is, there's two types of civil service workers; Those that are dedicated to the mission of the organization, and those that are dedicated to the organization above all else.

Guess which one prospers.

People are funny that way

The more inconsequential and minor the item being debated, the louder and more vehement the argument.

More blood is been shed over details than major problems, often to the detriment of solving the real problems.

Re: Lotus Notes servers

" the server is called Domino. Perhaps because it falls over?"

And here I was thinking it was named after the Mask that pantomime burglars wear.