Posts by 2Nick3

Re: Dodgy Picture

There are so many things wrong with the picture that I'm trying to figure out if it's supposed to be a mix of Dune and some other series. Just can't figure out what the other one would be.

Re: Daniel Gould The power of suggestion

"A friend did something similar - a fake change warning"

Your friend should have lost his job for that. As soon as IT breaks trust with the users (for real, not the way the users always complain about) they become a liability in the company instead of an asset.

The next change comes up, and it's an important one, say to patch against the latest Ransomware, and everyone just remembers the hoax and doesn't pay attention. The joke just caused a major disruption to the function of the business, one that it may never recovery from.

Re: As long as they're still publishing dead tree books ...

..."there's no amount of electronic gizmos that can top having the book on the desk beside you with a dozen post it notes in the important places."

Exactly - there are times where you can find something in the book by feel - how thick the stack of pages is on each side. I have a number of reference books I can flip to within a page or two of what I want without looking at the TOC/Index just based on feel.

That and it's hard to take notes in the margins on an eReader. If you do manage it they tend to be visible on everything you read after that...

Re: A luddite writes... @scatter

Cutting the flight time between the US and India from ~16 hours to ~7 would make a huge difference for me, and I'm just a line grunt in my company. That's a whole day saved on the round trip - definitely not insignificant to me.

Re: Long File Path support

"I wouldn't call it metadata because it doesn't tell you anything about the data."

The original post about using an overly-long path was alluding to using the path to describe the data. For example, I had a user once trying to restore a file with a path something like this:

C:\Users\User Name\Documents\Meeting Minutes\Biggest Project Ever - Never Delete This Data - EVER\Project Scope Meeting With Bob Bill Jonathan Matthew and Jessica\Meetings in 2017\Meetings in March\Meetings on the 19th\Meeting where we discussed the Project Scope with Everyone and Jessica too\Part of meeting where Angela was there\Minutes.doc

THAT is including metadata in the path name. And no, the restore would not work to the original location (yet somehow the file had been created and backed up) while a restore to C:\Users\User Name\Documents worked great.

Re: Air gap with Windows gateways, you say (imply)

"... via two semaphore operators in a tunnel ..."

I frequently refer to bad network connections having "two squirrels with semaphore flags in the data path." I had no idea the use of that technology was so wide spread!

Re: No failure was identified

I was thinking the same thing when I read "...and allowing pilots to wear extra sensors during flight to collect data ..." That makes me think the g-suit (and associated systems) could be what they are looking at for issues, rather than the oxygen supply.

Re: If there is any justice...

More likely Lyft - he knows EXACTLY how Uber treats their drivers.

Re: Add it to the pile of coal.

Your point is good, but if you compared a 2010 Corolla to your 2010 Peugeot you'd see they are pretty similar with some of that. The amount of stuff that can be crammed under the bonnet of a car is pretty amazing, seeing as it all has to fit in and still function. But then there is barely room to turn a wrench in there any more.

Re: This will be tough...

"A search engine should be a search engine. As in, indexing information, searching for things in it, and then ranking the results based on relevant criteria. Not act as an arbiter of truth."

But in this case we are talking Google, who inserts ads into the search results, charges for things like Ad Words, and other things that involve them in the search results. And I think that's where things get a bit ugly for them here.

Re: When I was a lad ....

"Also, if I was in charge of the school in Sweden, I'd just have the sound system permanently playing a loop of farting/splashing/grunting noises."

If you're going to be worried about this, that is really the best solution.

Re: Manufacturer imposed NFZ's (No Fly Zones)

"Do you decide what is "safe" and what is not?"

"Do you decide what is "safe" and what is not?"

I'm riding along in the car with a friend of mine, and he blows right through a red light - didn't even slow down! I said "Dude, you just ran a red light!" to which he replied "Yeah, I know." The next intersection we come to has a red light, and he goes right through it. Once again I exclaim "Dude, that was ANOTHER red light!!" "Don't worry about it," he says, "My brother does it all the time and there's never a problem." We get to the next intersection and the light is green, and he comes to a screeching halt! I say, "Dude! It's green, why are you stopping?"

"Because my brother might be coming the other way."

People who make up their own rules in a society tend to throw things off for everyone else. Most laws and rules have a very good reason for being there, even if you don't think they should apply to you.

I'm wondering if the boy's family has a case for wrongful death. That's what the Goldmans and Browns got OJ on, even though he was acquitted of murder.

Re: a Mortal Threat...to augmented reality games

I completely agree with your comparison to a concert - this is the same thing. You are attracting people to a location for entertainment purposes, so you need a permit. To get that permit, you need to provide facilities (toilets and parking) and security, or pay for them to be provided. Just because the crowds will be people intently staring at their phone screens instead of a stage doesn't change it.

King also had a book under the Bachman name called "Rage," which described a school shooting incident, way before they were common.

So is King predicting the future, or is he causing it? <glances warily at the dog/>

Re: Just something to think about...

You forgot the cost for the accountant to figure out all of that, the auditor to make sure it's right, the executive review to change it, the accountant's time to revise...

At my daughter's dorm this past year just about every room at a WiFi printer in it, including hers via her roommate, which they were sharing.

The first issue was that, between all of devices attached to the network the IP table for the building was consumed. That sorted out when all of the extra devices (family cell phones, etc.) left after move-in was complete. Then there was the fact that most everyone had the same model printer (it was on sale at the nearest office supply store), so identifying which one was which on the network was near impossible, unless you changed the printer name (and were willing to go through pages of names to find yours - always start with 'AAAA' to be at the top of the list!). And IP addresses changed frequently, so permissions had to be updated frequently, for those that had even bothered.

My solution was a USB cable off the back of the printer - worked every time my daughter plugged it into her laptop. Her roommate fought the WiFi until they were both sick of the printer firing up at 03:00 and printing a random job from someone else in the building.

Simple is so often better.

Re: Bah!

Nope, my eyes were wide open, even had just had a second cup of coffee. It was a genuine question, my apologies that you took it as some kind of insult.

"Plastic carrier bags and party sized balloons should pose no threat to even small single engine ultra lights,let alone a huge four engine accident waiting to happen like a 380.."

Fouling the prop on a single engine light aircraft would cause a major problem - it just became a glider (and not an efficient one with a fouled, unfeathered prop). And the pilot now has to find a suitable place to land within the glide range (which decreases with any maneuvering they do) while also keeping the plane above stall speed (which increases during maneuvering).

Re: Price googing?

"You would have thought they would have got a better discount but OTOH there are other unspecified items."

Well, there is no incentive at all for MS to provide a discount at this point. There is zero chance of a renewal. They aren't going to collect on the bill, which means they will end up writing it off, so maximizing the value makes sense. And if they somehow do collect on it, so much the better.

"Odd - I never had any issues with our OS/2 Notes servers. They just ran and ran, and were fairly nippy too."

The only problems I ever had running Notes on OS/2 was when the Notes Admins did something dumb. Like turning off the machine because shutdown took too long (because Notes was doing it's shutdown).

A few corrupted os2.ini and os2sys.ini files later the Notes Admins weren't allowed in the data center any more.

Re: MP3 is good enough for 90% of people.

I had a professor in college who claimed he could hear the digital "steps" in CD playback. Back in 1993-94. It's supposedly impossible for the human ear to detect, but he claimed he would get headaches listening to CDs. He would correctly identify cassettes recorded from CD against store-bought cassettes or recordings from LP, and we even tried to fool him once by switching between LP and CD for sources on a mix tape. He offered a 5% bonus on your final grade if you could fool him - to my knowledge no one ever claimed it.

But then he was a huge Grateful Dead fan, so who knows??

Re: 'Security' questions?

The security questions with answers that can change over time are not very good. I had this one come up the other day: "What is the name of your favourite movie?"

What took me forever to remember is that I had setup the online security on this account a good decade ago, so I had to ask what my younger self would have answered. I probably only got it because I had rewatched it recently.

So then I had to work through how I could have ever liked that movie, much less had it as my favourite!

Re: Never quite understood the logic

Too many people have their self-value defined by the number of "Friends" they have and the number of Likes their posts get.

Is it really 15 minutes of fame when it's the summation of 900k separate milliseconds?

Re: And of course this service will involve piggybacking on Comcast and Charter WiFi routers

I don't have either provider, but from what I hear of them (here and elsewhere) they might be in for a surprise when their customers actually have the choice to not use their services. Such tends to happen when there is competition in a market rather than a physical monopolistic lock-in.